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Article 1725 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Dennett on Edelman--what a total loss
Message-ID: <5743@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 28 Nov 91 18:52:28 GMT
References: <57569@netnews.upenn.edu> <1991Nov27.031545.11235@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <5734@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1991Nov28.051621.24327@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 19

In article <1991Nov28.051621.24327@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <5734@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>
>>In article <1991Nov27.031545.11235@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>>>He comes close to saddling AI researchers with the ridiculously strong
>>>claim that "the brain is a Turing machine" (a claim that I note has
>>>been bandied about a number of times in this newsgroup, almost always
>>>by anti-AI proponents looking for straw figures). 
>>
>>Really, I thought they were arguing that artificial intelligences
>>on computers (_not_ brains) were FSAs (_not_ Turing Machines).
>
>The quantifier was existential, not universal.

So?  I do not agree with your "almost always", though perhaps I
should retract the "not brains".  (I thought the double disagreement
was more amusing.  Sorry if it confused.)  Moreover, it seems to
be the pro-AI side that is claiming all of the necessary properties
of brains can be captured by TMs.


