On 2/15/2013 6:26 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 3:03 PM, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net> wrote:

I meant if the table talks to you just like a person does, giving you
consistently interesting conversation and useful advice on a wide
variety of subjects. Unless it's a trick and there's a hidden speaker
somewhere, you would then have to say that the table is intelligent.
You might speculate as to how the table does it and whether the table
is conscious, but those are separate questions.

     Who is to say that that table was actually a TV set in the shape of a
table or a table that had some other means to transmit what would satisfy a
speech-only Turing test? This goes nowhere, Stathis.
That's why I said "unless it's a trick". The same consideration
applies to anything: how do I know that my neighbour isn't a puppet
manipulated by someone else?
Hi Stathis,

Maybe because we (individually) might want to understand (predict) the behavior of that neighbour, so that we could trust them?



I think you're using the word "intelligent" in a non-standard way,
leading to confusion. The first thing to do in any debate is agree on
the definition of the words.

     Could you define "intelligence" for us in unambiguous terms? I don't
recall Craig trying to do that...
I gave an operational definition. One dictionary definition is "the
ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills". It is not
synonymous with consciousness.


Umm, are you OK with anthropomorphication... ? Let me ask a different question: In your opinion, does the universe 'out there' have to have properties that match up one-to-one with some finite list of propositions that can be encoded in your skull?

--
Onward!

Stephen


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