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From: mark@verdix.com (Mark Lundquist)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Message-ID: <244@verdix.verdix.com>
Date: 11 Jan 89 19:05:21 GMT
References: <552@soleil.UUCP> <687@htsa.uucp>
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Reply-To: mark@verdix.com (Mark Lundquist)
Organization: Verdix Western Operations; Aloha, OR
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In article <687@htsa.uucp> fransvo@htsa.UUCP (Frans van Otten) writes:
>I really stick to my definition of intelligence:
>
>  ***  Intelligence: The ability to draw a conclusion.
>
>  ***  Needed:        A database and an algorithm to reach a conclusion
>                      based on the data.
>
>  ***  Improvements:  The ability to change the database.
>		      The conclusion-algorithm being part of the database,
>		      so that the system can add/change algorithms.
>
>I would like to know how other people think about my definition.

Well...I'm not sure that it's very useful.  The problem is that it doesn't
really answer anything for us; instead, it takes all the interesting and
difficult issues that used to be part of the question "What is intelligence?"
and pushes them back into different questions.  For instance, "How do we
describe the particular unique way that human beings draw conclusions?"
This would be perfectly valid if this definition accurately reflected what
the word 'intelligence' does in our language.  Unfortunately, it doesn't
(I think), unless you mean something very special by the phrase "draw a
conclusion".  Suppose I said "Well, I have this tic-tac-toe-playing program.
It must be intelligent, since it correctly draws a conclusion about what the
next move should be."  One might respond by saying, "Not really; your
program can't be said to hold a _belief_ about the correctness of the
proposed tic-tac-toe move.  You've simply set up the bits in the machine in
such a way that it prints something on the screen, which happens to
correspond to a correct tic-tac-toe move, but only because you've rigged it
that way.  It's a conclusion in a sense, but it's not the kind of conclusion
that I meant".  This of course would beg the question "Then just what sort
of 'conclusion' do you mean?"
   However, one might respond to my tic-tac-toe suggestion as follows:
"You're quite right.  Your tic-tac-toe program _is_ intelligent.  Of course,
it's far less intelligent than a baboon.  Humans, in turn, exhibit
intelligence on a grander scale yet.  But in principle, it's the same."
This response would also be question-begging.  How is it that humans and
baboons apply this principle, to be able to exhibit their respective degrees
of intelligence?
	No matter how you slice it, it comes up peanuts.

	I would say that intelligence is what minds do.  Of course, this
definition is _at_least_ as question-begging as the last one, and almost as
useless, except for one thing:  it does seem to describe what people mean
when they use the word 'intelligence'.  I suspect that we'll never find a
definition of intelligence that escapes the difficulty that I've
described.  I guess I still don't understand the necessity of formulating
such a definition.