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The Western Canon Mailing List
Moderator: Paul John Barnette Jr.
Activation Date: March 8, 1997
Current Date:  July 7, 1997
Current Membership: 78
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1. What would Descartes' opinion be in regards to the current 
debate over the possibility of artificial intelligence?

I think Descartes is in another plane. His book is about metaphysics 
and the current debate over artificial intelligence is a technical 
one. In this debate, the posibility of thinking machines is not 
discused (and this is the only metaphysical debate) but the technical 
advances for information processing and, from here, the machine take 
decisions. I'm not sure Descartes would be interested in such 
things.

Response:

Mr Camacho, I am afraid that I must disagree with you on this point.
In The Discourse on the Method Descartes states that the only sure 
way to distinguish between an automaton and a real human would be the 
human's ability to carry on a conversation. I was astonished at this 
passage because it's exactly the same as the Turing test for 
artificial intelligence, named after the english mathematician Alan 
Turing. The fact that Descartes arrived at the same conclusion over 
three hundred years earlier is nothing sort of amazing to me.

Paul John Barnette Jr.


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