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From: throopw@xyzzy.UUCP (Wayne A. Throop)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence, Infinity, and Hate
Message-ID: <2013@xyzzy.UUCP>
Date: 23 Nov 88 19:43:24 GMT
References: <493@soleil.UUCP>
Organization: Data General, RTP NC.
Lines: 40

> peru@soleil.UUCP (Dave Peru)
> [...]
> Consider this argument over, you all won.  I am mistaken in my views. [...]
> Obviously people are too emotional about my ideas to be objective. [...]
> Human beings are simply self-replicating "food processors".

Despite the argument being "over", there are interesting things to
note about the statements Dave makes here.  First, I don't find most
people too emotional to discuss it, especially on the "materialist" or
"mechanist" side of things.  Quite the reverse.  I suspect that what
Dave perceives as "emotional" reaction to the content is instead
irritation at the style.  In particular, the lack of supporting
substance to Dave's presentation of his position, which comes across
as a series of assertions without acompanying support.  (And, in this
particular case, irritation at the seeming lack of familiarity with
the long history of debate on Lucas-style arguments against AI.)

Second, it is amazing how non-materialists or non-mechanists regularly
throw in diminuitive adjectives when discussing mechanical notions of
intelligence.  "Mere" machines.  "Simply" self-replicating
food-processors.  "Only" particles banging together.  It seems
impossible to make them realize that the "usual" mechanist position is
not that machines are "mere", and humans are machines, and that
therefore humans are "mere".  Rather, it is that humans are machines,
humans are NOT "mere", and therefore MACHINES are not necessarily
"mere", or "simple" or "only".

The continued juxtaposition of "mere" or "simple" and other
diminuitives with any mechanist-sounding analogy is simply an
emotional ploy, designed to play to the general (and I think mistaken)
notion that machines are simple, limited things.  This "argument from
ridicule" is essentially a mutated form of the "argument from blatant
assertion", where the blatant assertion is, in fact, the desired
conclusion of the non-mechanist: that machines are just too simple to
support complex human-equivalent behavior.

--
Just because you wind up naked doesn't make you an emperor.
                                        --- Padlipsky
-- 
Wayne Throop      <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw