From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!swrinde!gatech!mcnc!aurs01!throop Tue Mar 24 09:57:30 EST 1992
Article 4613 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: throop@aurs01.UUCP (Wayne Throop)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: is the CR for the birds?
Message-ID: <60441@aurs01.UUCP>
Date: 19 Mar 92 18:26:38 GMT
References: <6431@skye.ed.ac.uk>
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> From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
> Suppose there's an argument that a particular
> kind of airship is too heavy (or wrongly shaped) to fly.  This is
> _not_ an argument that it is not a bird and hence it can't fly.

Interesting.  In considering the above, an image springs to mind.

Imagine an airship with flight-like behavior.  Now let us open up that
airship, and find within a bird on a perch.  That bird is definitely
not flying, so it is clear that flight-like behavior is not enough
to show that an airship is flying.

Of course some silly people may think that the fact that the bird
isn't flying doesn't have anything to do with whether the airship
should be thought of as flying or not.  These people should consider
that the airship might be inhaled into the lungs of a really, really
BIG perched bird.  Now there's only this big bird to be concerned
with, so SURELY we have now proven that this airship can't possibly be
flying, no matter how it flits about within the airspace in the big
perched bird's lungs.

In other words, I put it to you that the CR scenario is not at all
about issues of "too heavy" or "wrongly shaped".  It is composed
essentially of irrelevancies, demonstrating nothing. 

( Note: I certainly don't think that anybody has established either
  that programs ever CAN exhibit understandinglike behavior, nor that
  even if they did they ought to be considered to understand.  I only
  point out that the CR scenario is composed entirely of irrelevancies,
  and provides no insight into the situation at all. )

Wayne Throop       ...!mcnc!aurgate!throop


