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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Bag the Turing test (was: Penrose and Searle)
Message-ID: <D03I36.38K@spss.com>
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References: <D00167.91w@spss.com> <3bg9nu$mme@newsbf01.news.aol.com>
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 19:28:17 GMT
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In article <3bg9nu$mme@newsbf01.news.aol.com>, JRStern <jrstern@aol.com> wrote:
>In <D00167.91w@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>>Turing, so far as I can see, 
>>proposed the test not as a definition of intelligence but as a purposeful
>>sidestepping of such definitions, and as a way of getting people to think
>>about the possibility of machine intelligence.
>
>It's a surface test.  You argue for a deep theory.  Nobody claims
>the TT test engages any deep theories.  

I'm not sure what you mean here.  If you mean that nobody thinks the TT
was defined in the context of a certain approach to mind, this isn't so;
I claim it comes from an almost exclusively rational-linguistic conception 
of intelligence, and others have claimed (rightly or wrongly) that it is 
an expression of behaviorism.  If you mean that the TT isn't a theory of
mind, I agree, but others don't; they've argued that it is the only or the
best definition of intelligence we have.

>Even if you granted it was a functional definition of intelligence, 
>it would still not be a description of how to realize that function.  
>Running a four-minute mile is a test of speed, but nothing in the test 
>tells you how to run that fast.

A better analogy with how the TT has been used would be if the four-minute
mile were proposed as a definition of "athleticism", with scorn expressed 
toward anyone who asked for a better definition or suggested that better tests
could be devised.
