4 ideas
3979 | The Turing Machine is the best idea yet about how the mind works [Fodor on Turing] |
Full Idea: Alan Turing had (in his theory of the 'Turing Machine') what I suppose is the best thought about how the mind works that anyone has had so far. | |
From: comment on Alan Turing (Computing Machinery and Intelligence [1950]) by Jerry A. Fodor - Jerry A. Fodor on himself p.296 | |
A reaction: I am not convinced, because I don't think rationality is possible without consciousness. The brain may bypass the representations used by a computer. |
5321 | In 50 years computers will successfully imitate humans with a 70% success rate [Turing] |
Full Idea: In about fifty years' time it will be possible to program computers to play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70% chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning. | |
From: Alan Turing (Computing Machinery and Intelligence [1950], p.57), quoted by Robert Kirk - Mind and Body §5.9 | |
A reaction: This is the famous prophecy called 'The Turing Test'. The current state (2004) seems to be that the figure of 70% is very near, but no one sees much prospect of advancing much further in the next 100 years. Dennett sees jokes as a big problem. |
15666 | To understand language is to know how to use it to reach shared understandings [Habermas] |
Full Idea: One simply would not know what it is to understand the meaning of a linguistic expression if one did not know how one could make use of it in order to reach understanding with someone about something. | |
From: Jürgen Habermas (On the Pragmatics of Communications [1998], p.228), quoted by James Gordon Finlayson - Habermas Ch.3:34 | |
A reaction: Not offered as a 'theory of meaning', and certainly plausible. Compare a hammer, though: a proper understanding is that it is used to exert a sharp force, but you can take in its structure and nature before you spot its usage. |
7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |