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From: throopw@xyzzy.UUCP (Wayne A. Throop)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: RE: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Message-ID: <1967@xyzzy.UUCP>
Date: 21 Nov 88 20:19:55 GMT
Organization: Data General, RTP NC.
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Referenes: <484@soleil.UUCP>

> peru@soleil.UUCP (Dave Peru)
> Definition of Intelligence:
>  1. Know how to solve problems.
>  2. Know which problems are unsolvable.
>  3. Know #1, #2, and #3 defines intelligence.
> This is the correct definition of intelligence.  If anyone disagrees, please
> state so and why.

I disagree, because this matches very poorly with what people seem
operationally to mean when they use the term.  Better matches are
gotten by "Intelligence is the extent to which one knows things about
stuff", or perhaps "Intelligence is the ability to come to know more
things about more stuff."


Of course, despite being better than Dave's attempts, my trial definitions
suffer the same flaw as Dave's... namely, they don't tie down what it
means to know something.  And, in fact, this is really the basic question
here, compared to which the question of "what is Intelligence" is a mere
quibble, and that is "what does it mean to know something?".  (And even
more basic, and even harder, "what does it mean to mean something?".)

It's questions like these that keep people arguing in talk.philosophy.misc.

And we can see fairly clearly that the question about "to know" is
what Dave is really getting at, because the assertions at the end of
his posting:

> If you take into account the unsolvable problems of Turing machines,
> then this proves Artificial Intelligence is impossible.

> "Artificial Intelligence" is an unsolvable problem.

> Human beings are not machines.

> Human beings are capable of knowing which problems are unsolvable, while
> machines are not.

... boil down to the assertion that humans "know" things in some
mysterious way different from the way that machines "know" things.
If Dave wished to convince me of the assertions he made, he would have
to convince me that machines and humans "know" things in ways
fundamentally distinct (as opposed to being distinct only in
complexity or superficial organization).

--
Alan Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether
machines can think, a question of which we now know that it is about
as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim.
                                        --- Edgser Dijkstra
-- 
Wayne Throop      <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw