🚀 go-pugleaf

| Hans Weigand writes regarding submarines and airplanes:
| |... flying means roughly something
| |like "MOVE IN AIR ON OWN FORCE", whereas swimming is more than "MOVE
| |IN WATER ON OWN FORCE": it implies a certain kind of moving, inside
| |or on top of the water, that we attribute to humans, fishes, ducks,
| |but not to ships, submarines, and surfers. Redefining the meaning
| |of "to swim" to a purely functional term is no solution of course:
| |then you can say that a submarine can swim, but you still have not
| |characterized the swimming in its original sense.
| 
| |(A similar problem exists already for characterizing "flying" with
| |respect to "move in the air". A jumping frog does not fly).
| 
| |When we go to the term "thinking", again we have to ask ourselves
| |whether the functional performance completely captures the concept
| |or not. ....
| 
Lyle Seaman writes:
| All of this is just language usage.  If instead of being called "flying
| machines", the early attempts at airplanes had been called "supraterrans"
| or such, we might now say that only birds and bats fly, because it involves
| flapping motions that we usually only attribute to some kinds of animals.
| And early attempts at submarines were never called "swimming machines".
| (Does a flying squirrel fly?  Or a flying fish?  How is this different 
| from a frog?)
| 
| So I think the debate over "do machines think" is really just a debate 
| over how we (fluent English speakers) use the term _think_ and not a 
| discussion of what machines can do.  
| 
| Now, to confuse the issue.   Do dogs love their humans?  Does this question
| raise the same problems as the question of whether machines think?

Language is exactly the point. The French have 47 words for love, the Eskimos
have 47 words for snow, and the English language speakers have one word for
think -- obviously, thinking is not a large part of our culture. As a result,
the only pragmatic way to determine whether a machine thinks is in terms
of its function:
	An airplane flies.
	A submarine swims.
	A machine that functions at a task that
		normally requires thinking, thinks.
	ergo,
	A dog that behaves like it loves its human, does love its human.
		(although this may be considered neurotic
		and/or the dog may need a psychiatrist)
		(Not to mention cases of humans acting like
		lovesick puppy dogs)
		
Jim Winer -- jwi@mtfme.att.com -- Opinions not represent employer.
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...I've had some womderful daydreams about how the FAA controllers 
would react to suddenly discovering a dragon on short final into 
O'Hare on a busy night in IFR conditions... -- J.C. Morris, 
The MITRE Corp., McLean, VA