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Article 1981 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: bhw@aifh.ed.ac.uk (Barbara H. Webb)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: A Behaviorist Approach to AI Philosophy
Message-ID: <1991Dec9.140719.28708@aifh.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 9 Dec 91 14:07:19 GMT
References: <YAMAUCHI.91Nov24030039@magenta.cs.rochester.edu> <5727@skye.ed.ac.uk> <YAMAUCHI.91Nov27203011@magenta.cs.rochester.edu> <5739@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1991Dec6.020944.4967@syacus.acus.oz.au> <5816@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: bhw@aifh.ed.ac.uk (Barbara H. Webb)
Organization: Dept AI, Edinburgh University, Scotland
Lines: 35

One thing I find odd in discussions of the Turing test is that people
accuse it of being behaviourist. For example, Jeff Dalton, who I think
was responsible for the subject line; or Drew McDermott, who's
interesting article contained the line "anyone who thinks the Turing
test is an interesting test for intelligence is guilty of behaviourism".

Behaviourism does get rather misrepresented, but I take it that what
these writers and others mean by "behaviourism" is the belief (credited to
Skinner and his movement in psychology) that "all human behaviour can be
understood without reference to any internal mental states or processes".

Now, if you don't accept the Turing test (or some other criteria of
`identical behaviour') as being sufficient to attribute mental processes
to the entity that exhibits that behaviour, then you are suggesting that
it is quite possible for something to behave exactly as a human does
_without_ it having certain mental processes (conciousness, understanding,
whatever). In that case, why are we postulating these mental processes
when we try to explain the behaviour of humans? Why don't we just look
for the explanation that doesn't require all these problematic mental
processes? Why, in short, don't we subscribe to Behaviourism? 

On the other hand, to claim, in the Turing test, that nothing could behave
exactly like a human unless it had something like the mental processes
or mind of a human, is to claim that the existance of these processes is
necessary for human behaviour, that understanding these processes is
necessary for understanding human behaviour. This sounds like an
extremely anti-Behaviourism stance to me (in fact, rather more
anti-behaviourist than I am willing to go along with, but that's another
topic).

There are problems with the Turing test as a criteria for intelligence,
but just because you disagree with it, and also disagree with
behaviourism, doesn't mean that it is therefore behaviourist. 

B.W.


