Re: Aaron Sloman's "The Irrelevance of Turing Machines to AI" article

From: Neil W Rickert (rickert+nn_at_cs.niu.edu)
Date: 08/04/04 

Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 14:34:58 +0000 (UTC)

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Wolf Kirchmeir <wwolfkir@sympatico.ca> writes:

>Again, granted that "categorisation" takes place. But what, exactly, is
>it?

That would actually be a good topic, if only people could discuss
it intelligently.

> I submit it's behaviour.

It seems that to a behaviorist, everything is behavior. And that
makes your statement vacuous.

For me, categorization has to do with inputs, while behavior has to
do with outputs.

>But mostly, categorisation is language use.

I guess that is what you would conclude if you insist on construing
everything as behavior.

>** When I was first teaching, a question that vexed me from the
>beginning was, How do I know that a student has understood a tex? The
>answer is, of course, that the only evidnce we have is his or her
>language about the text.

Maybe we mathematicians have it easier. To a mathematician, a
student has understood the text if he is capable of solving problems,
including original problems that are significantly different from any
in the text. We judge understanding on the basis of behavior, but
this is not restricted to behavior that is in the form of "language
about the text".

I guess that makes me a behaviorist of sorts. But I am not a
radically stupid behaviorist. As far as I can tell, the "operant
conditioning" account cannot adequately explain the acquired ability
to solve original problems.

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