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From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Arguments need Examples
Message-ID: <DBMCwu.3xn@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <3u03sc$780@newsbf02.news.aol.com> <3u139m$jaa@nntp5.u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 20:00:30 GMT
Lines: 39

In article <3u139m$jaa@nntp5.u.washington.edu>,
Gary Forbis  <forbis@cac.washington.edu> wrote:
>I believe you are missing the point of all this discussion.
>
>The vast majority of the discussion isn't so much about what computers can and
>cannot do but upon what basis one is to explain the attribution of properties
>to entities and further the appropriateness of making the attribution of
>properties to entities.
>
>For instance, one could claim a chair was happy you did not burden it with your
>weight or one could claim the chair was unhappy you did not see fit to let
>it fulfill its function.  Upon what basis would one decide the happiness of
>a chair and is it appropriate to attribute this emotion to chairs?
>
>I don't know if computers can be happy or sad but I know that if they can it
>isn't because they can display a certain range of behavior.  It is no more
>appropriate to attribute happiness to a computer because it produces the
>string, "Happy happy, joy joy," than it is to attribute sadness to a chair
>because it creaks.  Our attribution of a property to an entity does not cause
>the entity to posess the property even if the attribution lets us make 
>useful predictions about the entity's future behavior.
>
You are making an unstated assumption that these properties are attributes
of the entities and not creations of the attributors, like in "beauty is in 
the eye of beholder". I think that this is the centre of the controversy.
If the attribution is useful in predicting entities future behavior, then one
can expect that it correlates with something specific to the entity, if not
then it is likely an invention of the atributor. If you disregard predictive
power (or lack thereof) of attributions you move away from science to 
(science-) fiction.
>-- 
>--gary forbis@u.washington.edu

Andrzej
-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Instructional and Research Computing  what they think and not what they see.
pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca                           Huang Po
