donn (11/27/82)
Re: arizona.1254 "Refutiation [sic] of the Turing Test" Sigh... It's too bad that people are still listening to what John Searle says about artificial intelligence. As far as I can tell he really has nothing useful to say; he is stuck in some old dualist rut proclaiming that a simulation of the real thing can never be as good as the real thing, due to some essential quality of the real thing that I don't understand but is nevertheless there. Pepsi will never be as good as Coke. Searle wrote up the Chinese example in an article in (I believe) Brain and Behavioral Sciences, a few years ago. Searle treats many possible refutations in the paper, some of them even convincingly. The journal format is such that investigators are encouraged to write responses to such position papers, and a horde of prominent scientists wrote back challenging Searle's article; many of these answers are quite good and (in my humble opinion) make hash of Searle's argument. I recall that Douglas Hofstadter was one of the respondents but his response was not to take Searle seriously, which I believe is a mistake... I may look this discussion up again to refresh my memory, this weekend. I like this sort of discussion but it should go to net.misc, not net.general; people, pleeeeeeze.... Donn Seeley UCSD Chemistry Dept. RRCF ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn