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From: minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: If it does not pass TT it is not intelligent????
Keywords: TT, intelligence
Message-ID: <1991Jun20.051502.14078@news.media.mit.edu>
Date: 20 Jun 91 05:15:02 GMT
References: <3727@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au> <1991Jun19.050512.27413@news.media.mit.edu> <3737@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au>
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In article <3737@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au> jbaxter@adelphi.physics.adelaide.edu.au.oz.au (Jon Baxter) writes:
>In article <1991Jun19.050512.27413@news.media.mit.edu>
>minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:

>So you are claiming that Turing, in devising his test, was defending the
>view that the only reasonable definition of intelligence is a behavioural
>one.
>>
>A behavioural definition of intelligence is fine for most practical purposes.
>In the same way, data sheets for transistors are all that's needed when
>building circuits. But we don't stop trying to understand how transistors work
>just because we know how they behave, and in the same way I don't see why
>we should stop trying to understand the nature of intelligence even if we
>know how to use it.

Sheesh, what's going on in this group?  Yes, I was saying that it was
a bad idea to try to DEFINE intelligence.  And I think that was
Turing's position as well.  Yes.

On the other side I agree with you completely.  Yes, we should go all
out to understand its nature.  That's my full time job and, I presume
yours.  And so far as I can see, defining "intelligence" is the worst
way to proceed because you can't get very far in defining things until
AFTER you understand them.  That's all I meant.  

If you do this, you might be surprised how useful it is.  I just
word-searched "The Society of Mind" and found only four occurrences
"intelligence" in its common sense usage, all in discussions of
cxommon sense psychology.  Yes, we humans possess a colossal
constellation of capabilities.  No, trying to describe them all in a very
few words -- which is all people seem to mean by "defining" -- seems
to have no particular utility in, as you put it, "trying to understand
the nature of intelligence".