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From: geb@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Gordon E. Banks)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Message-ID: <1811@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU>
Date: 26 Nov 88 14:18:05 GMT
References: <484@soleil.UUCP> <1654@hp-sdd.HP.COM> <1908@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1791@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <819@novavax.UUCP>
Reply-To: geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks)
Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
Lines: 31

In article <819@novavax.UUCP> maddoxt@novavax.UUCP (Thomas Maddox) writes:

>>receive socialization a la HAL?
>
>	Not in Cockton's eyes.  He wants to keep the argument focused
>on what he calls "socialization" rather than experience, which is the
>central issue.  Almost certainly, whatever we mean when we say
>intelligence has reference to abilities acquired through interaction
>with the universe.  However, if like Cockton you restrict the
>possibilities of acquisition of intelligence to social situations,
>then you have demonstrated (albeit through circular reasoning) the
>impossibility of machine intelligence.  Which is of course the
>hobbyhorse he continues to ride.  

Oh, I see.  I thought he was going to trot out the old self-reference
argument or some rehash of Dreyfus.  That is interesting. But
that would mean that we couldn't really talk about intelligence
as being a property of an individual, but collectively of a species,
sort of like a hive of bees or something.  This would rule out 
intelligence, I suppose, in species without significant socializing,
such as egg-layers where the parents don't stick around.
I suppose one could speculate on two types of attempts to create
artificial intelligence(s).  One would be to create an artificial
member of the human species (like an android) and another to
create an entire artificial species which the individuals would interact with
each other.  The latter seems more difficult and probably more
dangerous.  I don't think Cockton has given a good argument for
why eventually (given enough understanding of neural connections in
humans and sufficient advances in silicon) an artificial child could
not be created which could be socialized much as our real children are
(even as far as teaching it about feeding ducks).