Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!ames!eos!shelby!csli!weyand
From: weyand@csli.Stanford.EDU (Chris Weyand)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: free will
Message-ID: <9365@csli.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 10 Jun 89 20:34:08 GMT
References: <1478@cs-spool.calgary.UUCP>
Sender: weyand@csli.Stanford.EDU (Chris Weyand)
Reply-To: weyand@csli.stanford.edu (Chris Weyand)
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Organization: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford U.
Lines: 28

In article <1478@cs-spool.calgary.UUCP> falkg@vaxa.UCalgary.CA (Geoffrey Falk) writes:
>I beg to disagree with much of what has been said here.  Although it can never
>be known what free will is, it obviously exists (at least for me.)  

How do you know it obviously exists?

>Intelligence may well be exhibited by some machine of the future.  It may well
>be possible to create a deterministic software/silicon thing which can pass
>the Turing test with flying colours.  However, it is my FIRM belief that no
>entity whose behaviour is strictly determined (i.e. by a piece of coded soft-
>ware) can actually possess a consciousness.  

If you were willing to call the machine intelligent what does it matter if
it is conscious?  You imply that consciousness is not neccessary for
intelligence.  Why then are you so concerned about consciousness?

Turing's point in proposing the Imitation game was that were a machine
able to fool human participants as often as humans themselves did, we
could conclude that the machine was exhibiting what we might call human
intelligence.  He said nothing of consciousness.  

>The evidence for consciousness will be in the demonstration of
>behaviour that was not envisioned by the creators of the system.

If you believe this then there are several systems that you would say
show evidence of consciousness.  Doug Lenat's AM for example showed 
very surprising and remarkable behavior in discovering principles of 
mathematics.