From: Ken Clements (Ken@Innovation-On-Demand.com)
Date: Mon May 13 2002 - 16:11:13 MDT
Reason wrote:
>
> Fortunately I never took freshman logic courses -- too much minding of Ps
> and Qs for me.
>
You do not have to fall back on the rigor of symbolic logic in order to get the
benefit of basic logical reasoning. I believe that failure to teach logical
reasoning in school leads to many serious problems for society.
As well as begging the question, your original post indicated that children who
fail to pass the test that identifies humans would then not be humans. This
does not necessarily follow; it would require an "if and only if" test, one that
both identifies humans, and rejects those who are not human. For example, it is
know that all men are human, therefore, you can test a given subject to see if
he is a man. If so, you know you have found a human, but if not, you do not
reach a conclusion because the test was only one sided.
People often make this mistake with regard to the Turing test. The Turing test
is one sided. It originated because no satisfactory definition of thinking
could be established. It was generally recognized that humans think, so if
something could pass the Turing test, then that thing should be recognized as
being able to think as well. However, failure to pass the Turing test does not
establish that something cannot think. It is perfectly reasonable to envision
an AI program that is self aware, and has cognitive abilities beyond any human,
but does not pass the Turing test. For one thing, it may refuse to play our
silly game.
-Ken
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