Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!mit-eddie!media-lab!minsky
From: minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: "Emotion" vs. "Understanding" (was: Re: emergent properties)
Summary: Part 2.
Message-ID: <3708@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: 15 Oct 90 01:55:45 GMT
References: <3129@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <15268@venera.isi.edu> <3679@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <3344@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge MA
Lines: 13

I punched "send" too soon.  One more remark.

In article <3344@idunno.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU
(Eliot Handelman) also  writes:
> One can, in other words, easily verify Minsky's "theories" (if these
>  are what they are) by becoming Minsky's theories.

They are theories, indeed, so Eliot is guilty of foolish flaming, too.
I was maintaining the opposite point, that it is not enough to become
convinced about some idea about consciousness by becoming it.  I
though it was clear that my goal was find ways to build machines that
exhibit the phenomena being discussed.  Make an AI that appears to be
conscious, by commonsense standards, and then consider how it does
that to be a working theory of how people do it.