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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
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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
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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