Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!oravax!daryl
From: daryl@oravax.UUCP (Steven Daryl McCullough)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Hayes vs. Searle
Message-ID: <1607@oravax.UUCP>
Date: 23 Jul 90 00:04:59 GMT
References: <129.26a5feab@csc.fi> <14385@venera.isi.edu> <25618@cs.yale.edu>
Organization: Odyssey Research Associates, Ithaca NY
Lines: 46
Summary: Maybe *our* understanding is a trick of clever wiring.

In article <25618@cs.yale.edu>, blenko-tom@CS.YALE.EDU (Tom Blenko) writes:
> If I show someone a sorting algorithm, I don't think we'd have any
> trouble agreeing that the algorithm doesn't "know" how to rank Olympic
> atheletes or determine, based on grades awarded, the best student in a
> class.  Of course, if I build a system in which the algorithm is hooked
> up to the right inputs and outputs, the system will correctly rank
> Olympic atheletes or determine which student has the highest grades.
> And without much trouble I can probably alter the system so that it is
> able to determine the worst student in the class.  Or, I can alter the
> system so that it runs the same algorithm but doesn't do anything
> sensible at all.
> 
> Searle is making the same point about intelligence. The algorithm
> doesn't suffice.

Tom, I tried to make the same point earlier, that a computer program
cannot be said to "understand" something or "know" something
independently of how its inputs are derived, and how the outputs are
to be interpreted. It follows, as you say, that the algorithm alone
isn't sufficient. At the very least, it is also necessary to specify
the "wiring": how inputs and outputs are generated and interpreted.

Before the "wiring" is specified, I wouldn't say that the program has
*no* semantics; I would say rather that it doesn't have a *unique*
semantics. The program can simultaneously be for sorting Olympic
athletes or students.

This dependence on wiring doesn't automatically disprove Strong AI,
however, for the reason that there is no good argument (that I know
of) that human minds have a unique semantics, either. I happen to
believe that it is only the extraordinary complexity of the human mind
that makes it unlikely that anyone could come up with two completely
different, and equally consistent interpretations of human thinking,
as you did for a sort routine.

> Searle's claim is precisely that this equivalence relation is not fine
> enough -- that if two systems are extentionally (behaviorally)
> equivalent, it might still be the case that one was "intelligent" and
> one was not.

I think you are right about what Searle is claiming; that behavior is
not a sufficient test for intelligence. However, my old argument is:
what, if not behavior, allows one to infer that other *people* are
intelligent?

Daryl McCullough