Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!hubcap!ncrcae!ncr-sd!se-sd!jim
From: jim@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Jim Ruehlin, Cognitologist domesticus)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: What AI is exactly.
Message-ID: <3895@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Date: 20 Sep 90 15:32:04 GMT
References: <2495@frankland-river.aaii.oz.au> <3875@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <36796@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Organization: NCR Corporation, Systems Engineering - San Diego
Lines: 17

In article <36796@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> dmark@acsu.buffalo.edu (David Mark) writes:
>In article <3875@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> jim@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Jim Ruehlin, Cognitologist domesticus) writes:
>
>>I'm not being homocentric, I'm trying to be rigorous in what we're saying.
>>No one has "proved" intelligence in any other species or software. 
              ^^^^^^                  ^^^^^^^^^
>Jim, can you point me at a PROOF that humans ARE intelligent?

Only definitionally.  Since we can form the question "what is intelligence?",
and we appear to be the only species around (so far) that can, for the
purposes of pursuing the question we must be intelligent.

In other words, since we ask the question, we're intelligent.  You can
argue that we may not be intelligent in the "absolute" sense, but if not,
who cares? If we arn't, we'll never know it anyway, so why worry about it?

- Jim Ruehlin