>The submarine "swims", but almost none of that activity could be mapped onto how a human swims. Along similar lines Hubert Dreyfus famously said "current clai

>The submarine "swims", but almost none of that activity could be mapped onto how a human swims. Along similar lines Hubert Dreyfus famously said "current claims and hopes for progress in models for making computers intelligent are like the belief that someone climbing the tree is making progress toward reaching the moon." The problem with this way of thinking is that the fundamental principle in question gets conceded like it's no big deal. If you grant that I can swim, that I can climb a tree, even an inch, you've already given me absolutely everything. Of course further progress will be hard, but it won't be forbidden by some kind of transcendent philosophical principle. So with the submarine example, we might "swim" differently, but we can both navigate through water. What would be cause for concern in the sense of raising some fundamental limitation would be if we discover that the place we want to go simple isn't accessible by any "submarine" we could ever build, or that the place we want to go isn't to be found in the "water."