Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnewsj!jwi
From: jwi@cbnewsj.ATT.COM (Jim Winer @ AT&T, Middletown, NJ)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Can machines think....
Summary: Can submarines swim?
Message-ID: <3964@cbnewsj.ATT.COM>
Date: 22 Feb 90 14:42:00 GMT
References: <2313@ritcsh.cs.rit.edu> <1990Feb19.165835.9673@pcsbst.pcs.com>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 32

> ->Midnight Aesthete writes:

> ->What is so awful about saying that bosons think?  And the Rockies?
> ->Why do people insist on intelligence being "human-like" thought?  Isn't
> ->it a bit self-righteous to make ourselves the measure on our own scale?

> Roland Rambau writes:

> I didn't say it can't be true -- i said nobody is interested in it.

> ( I do this in an attempt to better understand the eternal
> debate about "Can submarines swim?" :-)

The answers that we provide to the questions:

	Can submarines swim?
	
and

	Can airplanes fly?
	
may tell us a lot about the subject of whether machines can think.

In paritcular, many of us would concede that airplanes fly, and some of 
us that submarines swim for all practical purposes. By extension then,
machines that perform a practical function that normally requires
thinking can be said to think. Let us keep in mind that our answers to
all three of these questions should be reasonally analogous.

Jim Winer -- jwi@lzfme.att.com
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Opinions not represent employer.