Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!crdgw1!greenba From: greenba@gambia.crd.ge.com (ben a green) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Testing Intelligence (Re: Turing Test). Message-ID: Date: 3 Dec 90 14:16:24 GMT References: <4832@gara.une.oz.au> <1990Nov30.180650.26648@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <1990Dec1.020816.1372@watdragon.waterloo.edu> Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com Organization: GE Corporate Research & Development Lines: 87 In-reply-to: cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca's message of 1 Dec 90 02:08:16 GMT The story up to last week: Philip Nettleton recently posted a summary of what he thinks this newsgroup regards as requirements on a system for it to be classified as intelligent. In brief, a) The system must be able to learn from experience. b) The system must be autonomous, independent of any operator. c) The system must be able to reason. d) The system must be able to develop self awareness. I responded with the remark that items c and d would tend to rule out the system _felinus domesticus_ as intelligent, since the items would require language and cats don't have it. Cameron Shelley asked me to explain what I meant by language and why reasoning and self-awareness require it. I responded that I referred to ordinary, socially derived language, and that reasoning is basically talking to oneself, and that self awareness is taught to us by other people by means of language. So ... In article <1990Dec1.020816.1372@watdragon.waterloo.edu> cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley) writes: I don't mean to be dense, although you may think otherwise :>, but I'm not sure what a "socially derived" language is either. Certainly a large component of human language is acquired through social interaction, most of it, but is language performance the only real measure of intelligence? ... I am assuming that the poster of the summary was directing his comments to intelligence in general, as has been discussed here, and not limiting them to humans. I readily admit that humans are the sole example of that level of intelligence available for study, but we can still attempt to generalize. My point, exactly. No, I don't think language performance is the only real measure of intelligence. I would say that cats ARE intelligent. That is why I objected to items c and d. But that doesn't mean that cats REASON. This subject is hard to discuss because there is no accepted vocabulary of technical terms to use. I guess I base my definition of reasoning on experience with logic and mathematics, which are based on manipulation of symbols in the manner of languages. >Self awareness is more subtle and perhaps here I am relying on an >unpopular position that self awareness is learned by interacting with >other people. This is not really as strange as it may seem. Haven't >you often heard therapists say that a large part of their task is to >help the client "get in touch with his feelings"? Especially men who >don't talk much about their feelings, or realize that they have them. >The therapy is talking and probing with questions, which requires >language. > I heard of this many times on tv sitcoms and the like, and I still don't see how it shows what you stated earlier. Here, you appear to be associating "self-awareness" (which has a great deal to do with interaction) with 'sensitivity' and I'm forced to ask what this has to do with your contention that intelligence requires what we would recognize as language? I don't think the existence of psycho- therapy is proof of this. Again, I don't think that intelligence requires language, but I do think that we could not learn self awareness without language -- certainly not easily. (This is why I question the inclusion of item d of Nettleton's summary.) For a complete statement of the argument, see the paper "Behaviorism at Fifty" by B.F. Skinner. It originally appeared in Science magazine in the middle '60s. It was reprinted in _Behaviorism and Phenomenology_, edited by T. Swann and in one of Skinner's later books, and most recently in _The Behavioral and Brain Sciences_, Vol. 7, Number 4, pp. 615-620 (1984) with peer commentary. It is ironic that most readers of this newsgroup will likely think that B.F. Skinner denies the existence of consciousness, while in truth, he has made IMHO the greatest contribution to its understanding. Skinner has been the victim of the big lie for many decades now. -- Ben A. Green, Jr. greenba@crd.ge.com Speaking only for myself, of course.