From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wupost!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Mon Mar  9 18:35:15 EST 1992
Article 4267 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <471@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 4 Mar 92 20:52:23 GMT
References: <1992Feb25.183002.17341@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <1992Feb27.211632.21398@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Mar2.151229.13822@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <1992Mar2.174626.18508@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Mar3.211437.12307@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 34

In article <1992Mar3.211437.12307@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
|>1) I *don't* insists on computers receiving sensory info in the same way
|>humans do.  See above.
|>
|Then you should not insist on computers having the same understanding a humans
|have (see above).

Well, I personally would not, but does that mean that they do not understand?

To insist that understanding is limited to *just* what humans do is a truly
dangerous position.  Dolphins most certainly do not understand things in
exactly the same way as humans.  Would you therefor deny *them* understanding?

I would also be *very* surprised if natives of Tau Ceti 3 (if such exist)
used exactly the same mode of understanding as we do.  In fact I would be
absolutely stunned if they even had a neural structure similar to ours
in more than just general features.  (They *might* not even have neurons
in the same way we do).  Would you deny *them* understanding?

Whatever criterion we apply to computers must also apply to living things.
Thus, whatever understanding is, either only humans can ever have it,
by definition, or there is some range of variation in mechanism that
remains withing the meaning of th term.

The question is, what is this range?  How different can a process be and
still be called 'understanding'?

This is *not* an easy question.  It is made even harder by the fact that
we do not yet know how *we* understand things, so we cannot even tell
how close something else is to our mechanism.
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)



