X-Message-Number: 17892
Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 14:45:33 -0500
From: david pizer <>
Subject: Turing Test - Does it have any value?

Most of us on this forum believe that our mind is our brain - period!
There have been discussions about Turing Tests in this forum before.  Since
the basis of cryonics is that the mind is the brain, and if we can perserve
the mind until sometime in the future when scientists can revive it and
stick it in a more perfect (un-aging, crush-proof, burn-proof,
nano-constructed) body then we have survived death.  I thought I might put
some of the ideas that are floating around in non-immortalist philosophy
for your comments.

Dave Pizer

============================

Does the Turing Test have any value?

The Turing Test is where the "blind" contestant (a person), tries to guess
which black-box type room contains a computer and which one contains a
person.  If the computer can fool a human (at least a normal adult), into
thinking that it is a human too, then (say the proponents of this), you
must conclude that computer has mentality or psychology similar to a human.  

A turing machine performs according to rules like a simple calculator,
(depending on what state it is in), these rules govern what happens to
certain input when the machine is in a certain state and dictates what the
output will be, and in some cases, moves the machine to a different state
at the end of an input.  Very mechanical and predictable.

In the philosophical theory of MACHINE FUNCTIONALISM the machine
functionalists hold that a particular mind is a realization of a turing
machine.  Any mind, they hold, is a computer.  The mind/machine's mental
states can be identified with the internal states of the machine table used
in the Turing machine.  If this is so, once we know the present state of
your mind, we can predict every thought you are going to have if we also
know what input your mind will receive.

Many people think the Turing Test is meaningless because it  doesn't shed
any light on internal processing or qualia.  There is no way to know, for
instance, if the computer, even if it did fool another human, had any sense
of awareness. There has been some mention on this forum before that
Searles' Chinese Room argument tries to point this out.  

Briefly Searles' Chinese Room argument is where a person is in a closed
room and knows everything there is to know about the SYNTAX of the Chinese
language but does not know the meaning of the words.  Words are sent into
the room, and the person puts together perfect sentences but never knows
the meaning of the sentences or words he is working with.  Searles hopes
with this argument to show that a machine that passed the Turing Test would
not know any of the meaning of the words used in the test.  In fact, the
machine would not "know" anything, it would not be capable of "knowing."

It may be important at this point to mention that the Turing Test does not
evidence the truth of the Turing Thesis.  Searles argues that the truth of
the Turing Thesis is in doubt because of his Chinese Room argument.  Syntax
does not equal consciousness, says he.   Input and output equivalence does
not provide evidence of  consciousness.

The problem, as I see it, is that there is no causal connection.  Computers
don't understand real things.  A real thing, for instance, causes you to
behold it.  A computer doesn't understand or work by rules that there has
to be a causal connection between the thing and your word that stands for
it, and you.  

Philosopher Kripke doubted Searles Chinese argument.  He doubted that a
person could be PERFECTLY input and output equivalent and not know the
Chinese language.  A person doing the Chinese Room task would have to be
different from a computer who does not understand the language it uses.
People do their tasks in a different way then present computers do their
similar tasks.  

Does the Turing Test have any value??

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