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Article 1241 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
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>From: smoliar@hilbert.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Subject: Re: Animal Vs. Human Intelligence
Message-ID: <1991Nov8.122421.27143@nuscc.nus.sg>
Summary: much a-do-do about nothing
Sender: usenet@nuscc.nus.sg
Organization: Institute of Systems Science, NUS, Singapore
References: <191674@tiger.oxy.edu>
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1991 12:24:21 GMT

In article <191674@tiger.oxy.edu> khan@oxy.edu (Onnie Lynn Winebarger) writes:
>    This isn't about Washoe being able
>to conceptualize that she's not telling the truth.  It's about the fact that
>she conceptualized an event which didn't happen.  What's more, I doubt either
>of
>the assistants she claimed to be responsible for the "doodoo" had ever decided
>to break toilet training, so she had never even seen the act which she
>described.  So she couldn't have based this story on something she had seen
>happen.  So she must have imagined it.	Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've
>always
>thought the ability to imagine entails an ability to conceptualize.
>
The more I read the different sides of this argument, the less I think they
have ANYTHING to do with conceptualization.  Washoe is not being much more
clever than ELIZA in this episode.  If we assume that she can associate the
sentence "Washoe did it" with "bad news for Washoe," then all she has to do
is come up with another sentence!  If this involves little more than
substituting some other name for "Washoe" in the sentence, why should
such a substitution have anything to do with either lying or conceptualization?
We are talking about little more than playing with putting different words
together into a sentence and trying to elevate the results to moral
significance!
-- 
Stephen W. Smoliar; Institute of Systems Science
National University of Singapore; Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Kent Ridge, SINGAPORE 0511
Internet:  smoliar@iss.nus.sg


