Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!isi.edu!smoliar From: smoliar@isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: toward a definition of AI Message-ID: <17107@venera.isi.edu> Date: 12 Mar 91 01:24:10 GMT References: <13477@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> <17084@venera.isi.edu> Reply-To: smoliar@venera.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Organization: Information Sciences Institute, Univ. of So. California Lines: 72 In article pja@cis.ohio-state.edu writes: > >In article <13477@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> news@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU (USENET >News) > writes: > >> Searle, on the other hand, is saying that there must be more to human >> behavior than any sort of mechanical analysis. What is that "more?" >> Well, >> that's where all the controversy lies. Searle seems to be part of a long >> line of philosophers, beginning with Brentano, who firmly believe that >> such >> a "more" exists but have not gotten much further than giving it a name: >> intentionality. The whole point of the Chinese Room argument is not so >> much to dump on artificial intelligence as to demonstrate that machines >> are fundamentally incapable of having intentionality. Given that >> "intentionality" is about as elusive a piece of terminology as >> "intelligence" (or Searle's favorite, "understanding"), Searle's arguments >> have more to do with intimidation than with deduction. > >You're equating "machine" with "Turing Machine". Searle's argument is not >that >"human behavior", as you've termed it, is extra-mechanical but is not >adequtaely represented by Turing Machine formalisms and the standard notion of >"strict" AI (i.e. pure symbol manipulation). First of all, I should assume the credit or blame for the original quotation, thereby taking the heat off the contributor for Colorado State who started all this. Secondly, the point about Searle is well-taken. However, we are still left with this awkward position that the inadequacy of symbol manipulating machines lies in this lack of intentionality. In other words we must now confront the question of what qualities a machine must possess to allow it to have intentionality. Saying it has to be more than a symbol manipulator is not enough. It is still necessary to be able to look at a machine, analyze it, and conclude from that analysis whether or not it has intentionality. The Chinese Room argument essentially says that we cannot base our analysis on the observed behavior of the machine. Very well, then, what CAN we use as a basis for our analysis? Another way of approaching Searle is to assume that he may be flogging the wrong horse. Probably the horse he REALLY wants to flog is Cartesian dualism. When he gets all "visceral" in talking about understanding, he is really saying that you cannot talk about the mind without taking the body into account. Since Turing's initial paper on artificial intelligence is basically dualist, Searle seems to have concluded that all artificial intelligence is similarly dualist. When I heard him at UCLA, he described Minsky as "the ultimate dualist," a description which, I think, makes little sense in light of THE SOCIETY OF MIND, which seems more concerned with getting the story about the body straight (or at least adequately modeled) than in trying to deal with mind as some THING which can be abstracted away from the body. It is probably the case that most of what has been done in the name of knowledge representation can be accused of dualism, but not all of the discipline should be viewed as following in those same dualist footsteps. > Equating all "machines" with >"Turing machines" and "symbol manipulation" is a limitation of what we >might call "machine". There are more powerful methods of computation which >can still be called "machines" but which can not fit into a turing machine. >Boolean Circuit Families (from computational theory) are an alternative method >of computation, clearly dentotable as a "machine" but are not able to be >represented by turing machines. > On the basis of my above paragraph, I do not think this is the issue. I do not think we wish to delve into the different flavors of computable functions. Rather, we should be exploring what it is we want out of machine behavior and how we can hope to get it. -- USPS: Stephen Smoliar 5000 Centinela Avenue #129 Los Angeles, California 90066 Internet: smoliar@venera.isi.edu