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From: DJG3@psuvm.psu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Turing Test: opinions on an idea
Message-ID: <91148.150929DJG3@psuvm.psu.edu>
Date: 28 May 91 19:09:29 GMT
References: <1575@ucl-cs.uucp>
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 19

The model/reality distinction looks to be another version of Searle's
argument that AI systems merely simulate intelligence and do not
instantiate it (though I'm not sure about what you're after in
suggesting that AI models can only *approximate* genuine intelligence).
One difference between AI models and the physics models to which you
refer is that AI models--certain of them at any rate--can be run.  What
Searle has no idea about in claiming that AI simulations are missing
essential *biological* features of genuine intelligence is just what
sorts of biological phenomena are essential to thought; without these
it's hard to fathom his conviction about the missing stuff being
essentially biological.  If AI models--running ones--cannot have the
right stuff (or if, as mere approximations, they cannot have the
right values) then what exactly is missing, or holding them back?
I'm just curious, here.  I've got no positive argument on behalf of
any extant systems.  (BTW--it's not just the fact of their being models,
right? Models can be exemplars, examples of the things they're models
of)

D. Gilman, Penn State, College of Medicine