John Barresi (1995) Building Persons: Some Rules for the Game
. Psycoloquy: 6(12) Robot Consciousness (7)
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Psycoloquy 6(12): Building Persons: Some Rules for the Game
BUILDING PERSONS: SOME RULES FOR THE GAME
Book Review of Bringsjord on Robot-Consciousness
John Barresi
Department of Psychology
Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia
B3H 4J1 Canada
JBARRESI@AC.DAL.CA
Abstract
The criteria that Bringsjord uses to decide what robots
can and can't be seem inconsistent. I agree with Bringsjord that
human persons are not "classical automata" (e.g., Turing machines),
but then neither are any interesting robots. I suggest that robot
intelligence must be tested by nature rather than human judges. The
"Cyberiad test" (Barresi, 1987) might replace the Turing test
sequence.
Keywords
behaviorism, Chinese Room Argument, cognition,
consciousness, finite automata, free will, functionalism,
introspection, mind, story generation, Turing machines, Turing
Test.
References
- Barresi, J. (1987) Prospects for the cyberiad: Certain limits on human self-knowledge in the cybernetic age. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 17: 19-46.
- Bringsjord, S. (1992) What robots can and can't be. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
- Bringsjord, S. (1994) Precis of: What robots can and can't be. PSYCOLOQUY 5(59) robot-consciousness.1.bringsjord.
- Dennett, D. (1984) Elbow room: The varieties of free will worth wanting. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
- Hofstader, D. (1982) Metafont, metamathematics, and metaphysics. Visible Language 16: 309-338.
- Kugel, P. (1986) Thinking may be more than computing. Cognition 22: 137-198.
- Putnam, H. (1965) Trial and error predicates and the solution of a problem of Mostowski. Journal of Symbolic Logic 20: 49-57.