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From: michaelm@bcsaic.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai,net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Searle, Turing, Symbols, Categories
Message-ID: <744@bcsaic.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 21-Oct-86 12:47:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: bcsaic.744
Posted: Tue Oct 21 12:47:53 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 23-Oct-86 18:56:37 EDT
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Reply-To: michaelm@bcsaic.UUCP (michael maxwell)
Organization: Boeing Computer Services AI Center, Seattle
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>Stevan Harnad writes:
> ...The objective of the turing test is to judge whether the candidate
> has a mind, not whether it is human or drinks motor oil.

In a related vein, if I recall my history correctly, the Turing test has been
applied several times in history.  One occasion was the encounter between the
New World and the Old.  I believe there was considerable speculation on the
part of certain European groups (fueled, one imagines, by economic motives) as
to whether the American Indians had souls.  The (Catholic) church ruled that 
they did, effectively putting an end to the controversy.  The question of
whether they had souls was the historical equivalent to the question of
whether they had mind and/or intelligence, I suppose.

I believe the Turing test was also applied to oranguatans, 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?
-- 
Mike Maxwell
Boeing Advanced Technology Center
	...uw-beaver!uw-june!bcsaic!michaelm