Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!styx!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!cartan!rathmann From: rathmann@brahms (the late Michael Ellis) Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.cog-eng,talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Re: Searle, Turing, Symbols, Categories Message-ID: <443@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> Date: Wed, 26-Nov-86 07:41:50 EST Article-I.D.: cartan.443 Posted: Wed Nov 26 07:41:50 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 26-Nov-86 19:55:32 EST References: <158@mind.UUCP> <150@cwrudg.UUCP> <160@mind.UUCP> <2495@utai.UUCP> <1817@rlvd.UUCP> <214@mind.UUCP> Sender: daemon@cartan.Berkeley.EDU Reply-To: rathmann@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (the late Michael Ellis) Organization: 2-3:30, Tuesdays & Thursdays Lines: 60 Xref: mnetor comp.ai:68 comp.cog-eng:16 talk.philosophy.misc:309 > Steve Harnad >> Keith Dancey >> [The turing test] should be timed as well as checked for accuracy... >> Turing would want a degree of humor... >> check for `personal values,' `compassion,'... >> should have a degree of dynamic problem solving... >> a whole body of psychometric literature which Turing did not consult. > >I think that these details are premature and arbitrary. We all know >(well enough) what people can DO: They can discriminate, categorize, >manipulate, identify and describe objects and events in the world, and >they can respond appropriately to such descriptions. Just who is being arbitrary here? Qualities like humor, compassion, artistic creativity and the like are precisely those which many of us consider to be those most characteristic of mind! As to the "prematurity" of all this, you seem to have suddenly and most conveniently forgotten that you were speaking of a "total turing test" -- I presume an ultimate test that would encompass all that we mean when we speak of something as having a "mind", a test that is actually a generations-long research program. As to whether or not "we all know what people do", I'm sure our cognitive science people are just *aching* to have you come and tell them that us humans "discriminate, categorize, manipulate, identify, and describe". Just attach those pretty labels and the enormous preverbal substratum of our consciousness just vanishes! Right? Oh yeah, I suppose you provide rigorous definitions for these terms -- in your as yet unpublished paper... >Now let's get devices to (1) do it all (formal component) and then >let's see whether (2) there's anything that we can detect informally >that distinguishes these devices from other people we judge to have >minds BY EXACTLY THE SAME CRITERIA (namely, total performance >capacity). If not, they are turing-indistinguishable and we have no >non-arbitrary basis for singling them out as not having minds. You have an awfully peculiar notion of what "total" and "arbitrary" mean, Steve: its not "arbitrary" to exclude those traits that most of us regard highly in other beings whom we presume to have minds. Nor is it "arbitrary" to exclude the future findings of brain research concerning the nature of our so-called "minds". Yet you presume to be describing a "total turing test". May I suggest that what you describing is not a "test for mind", but rather a "test for simulated intelligence", and the reason you will not or cannot distinguish between the two is that you would elevate today's primitive state of technology to a fixed methodological standard for future generations. If we cannot cope with the problem, why, we'll just define it away! Right? Is this not, to paraphrase Paul Feyerabend, incompetence upheld as a standard of excellence? -michael Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new born; you who by constantly shattering our mental categories force us to go further and further in our pursuit of the truth. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin "Hymn of the Universe"