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From: loren@tristan.llnl.gov (Loren Petrich)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Value of AI, was -> (Re: The Turing Test is no good!)
Keywords: AI
Message-ID: <66412@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Date: 15 Aug 90 01:18:03 GMT
References: <2860@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU> <3156@gara.une.oz.au> <3231@psueea.UUCP>
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Reply-To: loren@tristan.UUCP (Loren Petrich)
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Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
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	That's very good point about the Turing Test -- that our
"knowledge" of other people's minds is based on EXACTLY that
principle. I recall some months back getting into a long and involved
argument with Tom Simmonds on this very subject. He had claimed that a
computer can never truly "think" (which seems to be Searle's
position), and I challenged him to demonstrate that other people
think. I had to explain to him what the Turing Test was, and I
challenged him to find arguments for the existence of other minds that
did not reduce to the Turing Test. All he came up with was versions of
the Turing Test. If alternatives to the Turing Test exist, then they
must be hard to find.

	I think Searle's counterargument to the Turing Test is the
argument of "See? There's no mind inside!" I am not impressed by this
would-be _reductio ad absurdum_ -- how can one tell that there really
is "no mind inside" of a seemingly intelligent system? I would also
like to point out that neuroscientists have never succeeded in finding
the "mind" anywhere in our brains -- all they have ever found is that
parts of the brain do specific things that are far from being a
"mind". This suggests that "mind" is some sort of collective property
of the brain, one that cannot be localized anywhere. And the same
would hold true of AI systems.

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