Metro State Atheists said:
One of the primary points of the article is that it may very well be impossible to determine if [computer software that plays chess] does or does not know what chess is, or whether it knows anything at all.
Woe. I'm really beside myself Chalmer. If you think the computer knows that it's playing chess, I don't know how in the world to proceed. But, you're not alone. In a discussion at Iliff School of Theology down at Denver University with Bill Clinton's former pastor (and interim president of Iliff) Phillip Wogaman said to me in front of a crowd at a luncheon Chat with the Iliff President, that, "the pro-lifers would be right, and abortion would be immoral, if in fact the early trimester fetus is sentient." I asked him whether he knew whether or not the grand piano in the room was self-aware, and he said that he did not know. Ok. So, we witness both an intellectual tantrum, and a virtual admission that Wogaman is not qualified to advise on moral issues.
Metro State Atheists said:
Ultimately [whether the chess program is aware, etc.] depends on how we define knowledge.
Yikes. Chalmer. No. It depends upon whether the computer is self-aware. It is not. If you are going to go through life determining reality based upon how you define it, you are going to live a very confused life. (An atheist who despised me once called on air to tell me that reality is whatever someone decides it will be, that he creates his own reality, at which point I asked him: then why did you invent AIDs, child molesters, and Bob Enyart?) If we define that a hammer has intelligence if it has plowed more than a thousand nails into wood, and we find one that has, we haven't proved that the hammer has intelligence. We've only proved how confused we are.
-Bob Enyart
KGOV.com
