Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!mcgill-vision!quiche!utility From: utility@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca (Ronald BODKIN) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Sci. American AI debate Message-ID: <1934@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca> Date: 9 Jan 90 02:25:58 GMT References: <85384@linus.UUCP> <16577@megaron.cs.arizona.edu> <12667@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <52471@srcsip.UUCP> <12760@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Reply-To: utility@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca (Ronald BODKIN) Organization: SOCS, McGill University, Montreal, Canada Lines: 18 Keywords: In article <12760@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> kpfleger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Karl Robert Pfleger) writes: >"he would know that he is still not doing 3." WHAT?!?! > >How in the world does he know what 3 is?! If he knows what 3 (human >thinking) is, then why doesn't he publish a book and we can give all the >psychologists in the world something else to do! An excellent point -- I would say he BELIEVES he is not doing 3, but there is a large gap between opinion, and knowledge. As to the question about defining understanding, I think the point of this debate is two-fold: 1) people ARE implicitly arguing about what understanding is (when Turing proposed his test, he was trying to figure out some criterion for intelligence -- and in reply to a previous posting thereon, I think it was intended as a SUFFICIENT condition, although it was well-pointed out that it may NOT BE), and 2) after establishing some criteria for that, they THEN argue about whatis feasible in AI. And to a large extent, you're right that much of that is trivial, given certain notions about what understanding is. Ron