Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!gilbert
From: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument
Message-ID: <2573@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 13 Mar 89 10:31:13 GMT
References: <4298@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <Feb.18.17.26.17.1989.23438@elbereth.rutgers.edu> <8174@netnews.upenn.edu> <Feb.19.14.23.34.1989.8773@elbereth.rutgers.edu> <764@htsa.uucp> <7586@venera.isi.edu> <230@nbires.nbi.com> <7645@venera.isi.edu> <2498@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Reply-To: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland
Lines: 31

In article <7698@venera.isi.edu> smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar) writes:
>Gee, Gilbert, I don't see what has gotten you so excited, unless it is a rush
>of triumph at the possibility that someone who devotes at least PART of his
>time to trying to build software models of mental processes might agree with
>you on something!  I think your question is a good one, and I shall be curious
>to see if you are sympathetic to any of my answers.  However, let me first
>state that it is not my intention to lay down a manifesto for the study of
>mind.

Gee Stephen, you forgotten your smiley.  I'd like to see the
manifesto, rather than a limp restatement of Bacon's dislike of the
"idols of the market" in the shape of the intuitions resplendant in
our language.  I'm all for scepticism about meanings carried in public
language, but this scepticism should apply equally to the products of
AI, but it's all hope, "don't smother the budding flower" and "astronomy
took centuries" there.  All I can say from your account of scholarship
and intuition is that it smacks of hypocrisy: the products of AI come
in for far less searching scepticism than the everyday intuitions in
our language (and as we don't speak the same dialects of English, I
don't know if our common sense understandings are shared).

If you know what you're on about, if you know how you judge progress
in AI, if you know what marks out a good AI research proposal from a
poor one, then you should share it with us.  You are doing AI, so tell
us how you do it, what it tells us, and why we should believe you.

Otherwise it's 0/10 for scholarship I'm afraid.  Cruel, but there are
always jobs at the bank :-)  (lots of them).
-- 
Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science,  The University, Glasgow
	gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs <europe>!ukc!glasgow!gilbert