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From: cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Late thoughts on T Test, rooms, and functions
Message-ID: <2762@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 7 Jan 90 06:24:02 GMT
Reply-To: cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY
Lines: 30


Referring to the Sci.  Am.  articles, am I correct in identifying a
serious problem w/the computationalist assumption that brains calculate
functions? Functions are many-one, and implemented by deterministic
algorithms.  No animal behavior, let alone human behavior resulting from
thought, is strictly deterministic.  How can we avoid error if we assume
minds calculate functions?

Do we know that humans (some, most, all) pass the Turing Test?

Why is the T Test characterized as being wholy sufficient for
ascertaining intelligence (i.e.  passing = intelligence, failing =
non-intelligence)? Like statistical tests, why isn't passing a T Test
merely *evidence for* intelligence? In problems of induction, no finite
amount of evidence is sufficient to make the inference, rather refusing
to make the inference becomes sillier and sillier.  Similarly, as we
give harder and harder T Tests (and the system passes) it becomes more
difficult to deny it's intelligence, although still impossible to affirm
it.  The Chinese room is intended as a limitting example, but like all
good philosophical (ideal) examples, is impossible to construct. 

What is the significance of something really not being intelligence yet
for all the observations we can possibly make on it it appears to be
intelligent (e.g.  Searle's room)? Isn't the query "is it *really*
intelligent" vacuous under such conditions, or at least undecidable?
-- 
O------------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, Cybernetician at Large, cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
| Systems Science, SUNY Binghamton, Binghamton NY 13901, USA
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .