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From: cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Can Machines Think?
Keywords: Searle Chinese Room Turing test software hardware
Message-ID: <1779@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 30 Dec 89 15:20:49 GMT
References: <83367@linus.UUCP> <1989Dec18.014229.18058@athena.mit.edu> <968@metapsy.UUCP> <1989Dec19.061822.27585@athena.mit.edu> <973@metapsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Organization: Dept of AI, Edinburgh University, UK.
Lines: 30

In article <973@metapsy.UUCP> sarge@metapsy.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode) writes:
>In article <1989Dec19.061822.27585@athena.mit.edu> crowston@athena.mit.edu
>(Kevin Crowston) writes:

>>>[After object] code is loaded, there is actually a different
>>>physical machine there, just as much as if one had gone out and
>>>bought a different machine.

>>But even so, the program still exists in both cases, right?

>Good question.  What *is* a "program", anyway?
> ...
>is it, as I suspect, the detailed *concept* the programmer had in
>mind when he wrote the source code?

Computer programs, like knitting patterns, sometimes arise by
serendipitous accident. "Gee, that looked good - wonder if I can do it
again?" There are also those cases where one computer program invents
another. In these cases there need never have been any mind which had a
detailed concept, or even intention, behind the source code. Even in
fully deliberate programs, it is sometimes the case that the programmer
fixes a bug by accident without understanding it - sometimes the only
way, for obscure bugs, just to tinker until it goes away. But I would
not like to say that programs which have never been understood are
therefore not programs, any more than I would like to say that if God
does not understand how I'm built then I'm not really a person.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aipna   031 667 1011 x2550
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK