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From: dyer@UCLA-CS.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Intuition
Message-ID: <1249@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 24-Jun-84 16:17:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.1249
Posted: Sun Jun 24 16:17:28 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Jun-84 03:56:53 EDT
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From:  Michael Dyer <dyer@UCLA-CS.ARPA>

Those who are trying to argue that "intuition" is something that cannot
be mechanized or understood in terms of computational structures and
operations should try substituting the word "soul" everywhere for
"intuition"  and see if they still believe their own arguments.
If they still do,  then I ask them to re-read Minksy's comments
on the "soul" a few digest issues back.  The task of AI researchers
is to show how such vague notions CAN be understood computationally,
not to go around arguing against this simply because such notions
as "intuition" are so vague as to be computationally useless at
such at a bs level of discussion.  It's like my postulating the
notion of "radio" and then looking at each transistor, crystal, wire or
what-have-you inside the radio, and then saying "THAT part can't be a
radio; that OTHER part there can't be one either.  I guess the idea of
'radio' can never be realized by the combination of such parts."
I second the suggestion that amateur philosophers of mind read
Hofstadter, or better yet, start building computer programs which
exhibit aspects of "intuition" and then discuss their own programs.