Xref: utzoo comp.ai:2756 talk.philosophy.misc:1658 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!cadre!geb From: geb@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Gordon E. Banks) Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Message-ID: <1833@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> Date: 30 Nov 88 23:09:38 GMT References: <484@soleil.UUCP> <1654@hp-sdd.HP.COM> <1908@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1791@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <819@novavax.UUCP> <1976@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1816@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <1983@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Reply-To: geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks) Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA. Lines: 41 In article <1983@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes: >In article <1816@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks) writes: > >>Your not so subtle needling of Americans would seem less >>hypocritical if it originated in a country (and continent) > >As for cultural styles, I was only drawing attention to the >differences. I was not trying to create division or claim supriority. >As for approaches to literacy, well there are differences here, and it >looks like at least one American takes gentle jokey references >to this the wrong way. Still, this is an international net, and we >can't all tailor our style of writing to suit one culture. > Hmmm, well, ok. It looked to me like you were being pretty snide, but I'll take your word for it that you weren't. I certainly am quite familiar with British and European styles of humor, having spent a good deal of time there both as student and visiting professor. Anyhow I think it best we look more to the problems closer to home (of which there are plenty on both sides of the Atlantic) and leave the foreigners to generate their own social criticism from now on. >>Is this some supernatural notion, or is >>it the result of evolution, or culture, or some other natural process? >Don't know, do you? There is a whole range of experience which does >not seem to hav a mechanical basis. Which behaviour is AI trying to >cover (and do say 'intelligent' behaviour, since this means nothing here)? No, I don't know. I was the one asking the questions. From your strong statements that "humans are not machines" it appeared that you (at least thought you) had some answers. If by "not seem to have a mechanical basis" you mean that we can not duplicate the behavior (yet) or understand it mathematically, then fine, I agree. But prior to Newton, the same could be said for the motions of the planets. At least back to the time of Helmholtz, people began to realize that the body was a machine. That coupled with the idea that the brain is a physical system and is the locus of the mind and behavior, seems to me to indicate that there is a very significant probability that what we observe as our very complex behavior may be that of machines. This does not prove that this is so. Even if we could duplicate our behavior with machines of our own creation, one could never disprove absolutely that there wasn't some other force involved (perhaps God would send souls to occupy the machine bodies of the robots).