Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!AI.AI.MIT.EDU!NICK From: NICK@AI.AI.MIT.EDU (Nick Papadakis) Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: [EBARNES%HAMPVMS.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU: Re: Sorry, no philosophy allowed here] Message-ID: <19880606032026.6.NICK@INTERLAKEN.LCS.MIT.EDU> Date: 6 Jun 88 03:20:00 GMT Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 21 Approved: ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu Date: Sat, 4 Jun 88 01:14 EDT From: EBARNES%HAMPVMS.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: Re: Sorry, no philosophy allowed here To: ailist@ai.ai.mit.EDU X-VMS-To: IN%"ailist@ai.ai.mit.edu" Editors: >If you can't write it down, you can't program it. This comes down to two questions. Can we build machines with original thought capabilities, and what is meant by `program'. I think that it is possible to build machines which will think originally. The question now becomes: "Is what we do to set these "free thinking" machines up considered programing". It would not be a strict set of instructions, but we would surely instill the rules of deductive reasoning in the machine. Whether or not this is "programing" is an uniteresting question. Call it what you will, one way makes the original statement true and the other way makes it false. Eric Barnes