Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Message-ID: <848@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 12 Dec 88 22:32:01 GMT
References: <840@quintus.UUCP> <2804@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 29

In article <2804@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) writes:
>From article <840@quintus.UUCP>, by ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe):
>" ...  For example, it is not the case that all people can be
>" hypnotised, whereas if a subject can be hypnotised by one mesmerist he or
>" she can usually be hypnotised by another.  This ought to suggest to us that
							    ^^^^^^^
>" just maybe hypnosis might be something that subjects do, rather than something
	^^^^^	       ^^^^^
>" that hypnotists do.

>Some bottles are harder to open than others, therefore bottles open themselves.
>Some programs are harder to write than others, so computers have free
>will.  (This method of argument has great possibilities.)

I think you had better find some better analogies.  At *NO* point in my
message did I say ">therefore< people have free will".  All I suggested
in the passage quoted was that the fact that some people can be
hypnotised and others can't **suggests** that hypnosis is something that
the subjects do.  THIS IS A TESTABLE HYPOTHESIS!  (And in fact it is the
current theory.)  It does not follow from that that people have free will,
nor that they don't.  In this series of messages on this topic I have
been careful to avoid stating my opinion about free will at all.  I only
criticsed a naive and out-of-date view of hypnosis.

	Some bottles are harder to open than others, this ought to suggest
	to us that a property of the bottle rather than the opener might
	be involved.

Now _that_ would have been a fair analogy.