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From: sylvere@divsun.unige.ch (Silvere Martin-Michiellot)
Subject: Re: Thought Question
Message-ID: <1995Feb9.155014.25650@news.unige.ch>
Sender: usenet@news.unige.ch
Reply-To: sylvere@divsun.unige.ch
Organization: University of Geneva, Switzerland
References: <3hc0pa$934@nntp.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 15:50:14 GMT
Lines: 64
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai.alife:2349 comp.ai.philosophy:25437 comp.ai:27356

In article 934@nntp.Stanford.EDU, rubble@leland.Stanford.EDU (Adam Heath Clark) writes:
> Jeff Dalton (jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk) wrote:
> : rubble@leland.Stanford.EDU (Adam Heath Clark) writes:
> 
> : >Yes, but I can't imagine a non-conscious entity that could converse with
> : >me and talk about philosophy or consciousness. 
> 
> : Why not?
> 
> : It's easy enough now to have simple programs that converse about
> : philosophy and converse, though far from convincingly.  So you
> : should be able to imagine entities that do that w/o being conscious.
> : So as we imagine entities that do better and better at such
> : conversations, what sort of "better" is it that actually requires
> : consciousness?  Can you say anything about this at all?
> 
> It's not too hard to determine whether another entity really 
> understands something.  The programs they have now are laughably
> simple and don't resemble human thinking at all.  It is pretty
> easy to determine whether they understand anything (the best ones
> work by being as vague as possible, allowing people to infer
> thought processes, and it is very obvious that none of them has
> even the rudiments of cognition). 
> 
> If I talk to a computer and it is able to respond to what I say in
> such a way that it obviously understands what I'm talking about,
> I would call it conscious.  Because, if it's not conscious, what
> is understanding what I'm talking about?
> --
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> Adam Clark                           One of these days, I'm going
> rubble@leland.stanford.edu           to cut you into little pieces...
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


Just try the http://coyote.csusm.edu/loebner_contest.html,
then choose "talk to the winning program".

Then things will not look so clear.

Call me back after.

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-----------------

"Is anyone alive down there ?"

     sylvere@divsun.unige.ch 
   

Silvere MARTIN-MICHIELLOT
TECFA (Educational Technologies and Learning),
Faculte de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education,
University of Geneva,
9 Route de Drize,
1227 Carouge (Switzerland)

Phone: (..41) 22 705 9691, Fax: (..41) 22 342 8924

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