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From: james@uncecs.edu (J. Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Minds, machines, and Godel
Message-ID: <1991Jan29.211200.29482@uncecs.edu>
Date: 29 Jan 91 21:12:00 GMT
References: <28154@cs.yale.edu> <1991Jan19.055638.27731@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <28203@cs.yale.edu> <1991Jan21.022919.13895@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service
Lines: 32



In article <1991Jan18.005010.23943@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> 
  chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:

> [responding to David Thornley]
>Humans ...
>are very likely not complete and consistent when it comes to arithmetic.
>But the argument did not claim that they were.  Rather, it claimed that human
>capabilities differ from those of any given Turing Machine.

And in article <1991Jan21.022919.13895@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> writes:
  [responding to Drew McDermott]

>It comes down to whether you think a competence/performance distinction makes
>sense when applied to human mathematical capacities (where competence
>idealizes away from mistakes, death and boredom as performance factors).
>... If we accepted the notion, then the Lucas argument could be construed as
>claiming that the set of arithmetical statements encompassed by human
>competence includes statements that are outside the capacities of any given
>TM.  This, I think, would be of some interest to AI.

Would the argument make any claims regarding: "human capabilities
differ from those of any given human being" or "the set of arithmetical
statements encompassed by human competence includes statements that are
outside the capacities of any given human being"?

One could substitute "given army of mathematicians" just as well,
idealized or not.

Is there a notion of "TM capabilities" or "TM competence" we might
contrast with any "given TM" in the same way?