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Article 1811 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: A Behaviorist Approach to AI Philosophy
Message-ID: <5766@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 2 Dec 91 21:37:15 GMT
References: <YAMAUCHI.91Nov24030039@magenta.cs.rochester.edu> <5727@skye.ed.ac.uk> <YAMAUCHI.91Nov27203011@magenta.cs.rochester.edu> <5739@skye.ed.ac.uk> <YAMAUCHI.91Nov28161315@indigo.cs.rochester.edu> <5754@skye.ed.ac.uk> <YAMAUCHI.91Nov29151342@magenta
cs.rocheste
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 48

In article <YAMAUCHI.91Nov29151342@magenta.cs.rochester.edu> yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>In article <5754@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>Moreover, if Searle is right, having the right behavior isn't
>>enough.
>
>True, but as many, many people have pointed out -- Searle isn't right.

My point didn't depend on Searle actually being right.  The
"if Searle is right" was used to help indentify exactly what
his argument is and hence what's needed to refute it.

>I still have yet to see a convincing rebuttal to the "Systems Reply".

If the systems reply is "the system might understand", then it
may be right, but the mere statement that it might is not sufficient
to refute Searle's arguments about syntax vs semantics.  If the
systems reply is "the system does understand", then it's begging
the question (we're trying to decide whether it understands or
not).

>>The reason not to use the behavioral definition for
>>machines is (1) machines may produce the bahavior in a way that
>>is different from how humans do it, (2) it might turn out that 
>>those differences matter, so that we'll have good reasons for
>>deciding that what machines do is "just a trick", and (3) we
>>don't yet know enough to rule out (2).
>
>It depends in what way "those differences matter".  In my opinion,
>they only matter if they result in differences in behavior.

That opinion is not universally shared.

>Using this line of reasoning, and lacking a full understanding of the
>human brain, one could argue that it is possible that the brains of
>men and women produce intelligent behavior using different mechanisms.

One could argue that my coffee cup is the most intelligent creature in
the universe, but how convincing would it be?  What we know of brains
indicates that man and women do not produce intelligent behavior using
radically differerent mechanisms.  We know almost nothing about how
machines would produce such behavior, because no such machines exist.

On the other hand, we know of many differences between computers
taken merely as instantiating a program and humans.  Your claim
is that only behavioral differences matter.  As an argument against
Searle, that's begging the question.

-- jd


