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From: harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad)
Newsgroups: mod.ai
Subject: Re: Searle, Turing, Symbols, Categories
Message-ID: <8610271728.AA12600@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Thu, 23-Oct-86 13:39:08 EST
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Posted: Thu Oct 23 13:39:08 1986
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michaelm@bcsaic.UUCP (michael maxwell) writes:

>       I believe the Turing test was also applied to orangutans, although
>       I don't recall the details (except that the orangutans flunked)...
>       As an interesting thought experiment, suppose a Turing test were done
>       with a robot made to look like a human, and a human being who didn't
>       speak English-- both over a CCTV, say, so you couldn't touch them to
>       see which one was soft, etc. What would the robot have to do in order
>       to pass itself off as human?

They should all three in principle have a chance of passing. For the orang,
we would need to administer the ecologically valid version of the
test. (I think we have reasonably reliable cross-species intuitions
about mental states, although they're obviously not as sensitive as
our intraspecific ones, and they tend to be anthropocentric and
anthropomorphic -- perhaps necessarily so; experienced naturalists are
better at this, just as cross-cultural ethnographic judgments depend on
exposure and experience.) We certainly have no problem in principle with
foreign speakers (the remarkable linguist, polyglot and bible-translator
Kenneth Pike has a "magic show" in which, after less than an hour of "turing"
interactions with a speaker of any of the [shrinking] number of languages he
doesn't yet know, they are babbling mutually intelligibly before your very
eyes), although most of us may have some problems in practice with such a
feat, at least, without practice.

Severe aphasics and mental retardates may be tougher cases, but there
perhaps the orang version would stand us in good stead (and I don't
mean that disrespectfully; I have an extremely high regard for the mental
states of our fellow creatures, whether human or nonhuman).

As to the robot: Well that's the issue here, isn't it? Can it or can it not
pass the appropriate total test that its appropriate non-robot counterpart
(be it human or ape) can pass? If so, it has a mind, by this criterion (the
Total Turing Test). I certainly wouldn't dream of flunking either a human or
a robot just because he/it didn't feel soft, if his/its total performance
was otherwise turing indistinguishable.

Stevan Harnad
princeton!mind!harnad
harnad%mind@princeton.csnet