Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!genbank!bionet!ig!arizona!mike
From: mike@cs.arizona.edu (Mike Coffin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: STRONG AND WEAK AI
Message-ID: <16033@megaron.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 9 Dec 89 15:04:21 GMT
References: <11870@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson
Lines: 18

From article <11870@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> (Stevan Harnad):
> The typical error of believers in Strong AI is a misconstrual of
> the Church-Turing Thesis: Whereas it may be true that every physical
> process is "equivalent" to symbol manipulation, i.e., is simulable by
> symbol manipulation, it is decidedly NOT true that every physical
> process IS symbol manipulation. Flying, heating and transduction, for
> example, are not.

Not unless we are living inside a simulatation.  Since we have no
basis on which to dispute their physicality, we accept our perceptions
as ``reality.''  Just, I suppose, as an artificial intelligence living
in a (sub-)simulation on a Cray-9 would have no choice but to accept
the simulated flight to Istanbul to the AI conference as ``reality.''

-- 
Mike Coffin				mike@arizona.edu
Univ. of Ariz. Dept. of Comp. Sci.	{allegra,cmcl2}!arizona!mike
Tucson, AZ  85721			(602)621-2858