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From: harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad)
Newsgroups: net.ai,net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Searle, Turing, Symbols, Categories
Message-ID: <2@mind.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 16-Oct-86 13:25:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: mind.2
Posted: Thu Oct 16 13:25:42 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Oct-86 22:53:41 EDT
References: <158@mind.UUCP> <150@cwrudg.UUCP> <160@mind.UUCP> <2495@utai.UUCP> <732@bcsaic.UUCP>
Organization: Cognitive Science, Princeton University
Lines: 58
Summary: Toy modules vs. mental modules and the turing test
Xref: mnetor net.ai:1193 net.cog-eng:288


In reply to the following by me in <167@mind.UUCP>:

>	there is no evidence at all that
>	either capacities or contexts are modular.

michaelm@bcsaic.UUCP (michael maxwell) writes:

>> Maybe I'm reading this out of context (not having read your books or papers),
>> but could you explain this statement?  I know of lots of evidence for the
>> modularity of various aspects of linguistic behavior.  In fact, we have a
>> parser + grammar of English here that captures a large portion of English
>> syntax, but has absolutely no semantics (yet).

I'm afraid this extract is indeed a bit out of context. The original
context concerned what I've dubbed the "Total Turing Test," one
in which ALL of our performance capacities -- robotic and linguistic --
are "captured." In the papers under discussion I described several
arguments in favor of the Total Turing Test over any partial
turing test, such as "toy" models that only simulate a small
chunk of our cognitive performance capacity, or even the (subtotal)
linguistic ("teleteype") version of the Total Turing Test. These
arguments included:

(3) The "Convergence Argument" that `toy' problems are arbitrary,
that they have too many degrees of freedom, that the d.f. shrink as the
capacities of the toy grow to life-size, and that the only version that
reduces the underdetermination to the normal proportions of a
scientific theory is the `Total' one.

(5) The "Nonmodularity Argument" that no subtotal model constitutes a
natural module (insofar as the turing test is concerned); the only
natural autonomous modules are other organisms, with their complete
robotic capacities (more of this below).

(7) The "Robotic Functionalist Argument" that the entire symbolic
functional level is no macromodule either, and needs to be grounded
in robotic function.

I happen to have views on the "autonomy of syntax" (which is of
course the grand-daddy of the current modulo-mania), but they're not
really pertinent to the total vs modular turing-test issue. Perhaps
the only point about an autonomous parser that is relevant here is
that it is in the nature of the informal, intuitive component of the
turing test that lifeless fragments of mimicry (such as Searle's isolated
`thirst' module) are not viable; they simply fail to convince us of
anything. And rightly so, I should think; otherwise the turing test
would be a pretty flimsy one.

Let me add, though, that even "convincing" autonomous parsing performance
(in the non-turing sense of convincing) seems to me to be rather weak
evidence for the psychological reality of a syntactic module -- let
alone that it has a mind. (On my theory, semantic performance has to be
grounded in robotic performance and syntactic performance must in turn
be grounded in semantic performance.)

Stevan Harnad
(princeton!mind!harnad)