PrepTest 105, Section 4, Question 19
A successful chess-playing computer would prove either that(22 more words not shown)
The reasoning above is most(14 more words not shown)
- Athe conception of(8 more words not shown)
- Ba truly successful(6 more words not shown)
- Ccomputer programs have(8 more words not shown)
- Da successful chess-playing(10 more words not shown)
- Ethe inability to(15 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A computer and a person might win at chess in different ways. Suppose a computer follows a procedure that doesn't involve what we call thinking. Would that prove that human chess players aren't thinking? I don't see why. The same successful result could come from different processes.
So be careful with "chess does not involve thinking." At most, a successful computer that didn't think would show that playing chess successfully doesn't always require thinking. It wouldn't tell us that the human way of playing involves none.
Then the author says our conception of human intelligence would surely change. Why? We were talking about a machine and a game. The argument hasn't explained how that discovery must change our understanding of human intelligence. That's another jump, and it's the one that initially stands out most to me.
What we’re looking for
The flaw question asks for a possibility the argument overlooks. I'd keep both concerns in mind: the machine might achieve its result differently from a person, and the author hasn't adequately connected its success to a changed conception of human intelligence.
Working the answers
- A
A close link between thought and intelligence would help explain why the author moves from one idea to the other. It's closer to something the argument relies on than to an overlooked possibility that undermines it. A doesn't show why a successful machine would fail to settle how people think.
- B
The argument tells us what a successful chess-playing computer would prove if one existed. It doesn't predict that someone will definitely invent one. We can evaluate a claim about what would follow from a hypothetical event without establishing that the event will occur. B attacks a claim the argument doesn't make.
- C
Success at other games doesn't identify the problem with this claim about chess and intelligence. Knowing that computers can play checkers, for example, would still leave us asking how those computers achieve their results and what those results establish about humans.
- DCorrect
This addresses the first concern: the computer's successful approach might differ from a human's. If so, its ability to win need not show either that it thinks as a person does or that the human activity of playing chess involves no thought.
We could learn that a machine reaches good moves by one procedure while people reason their way to good moves by another. That possibility undercuts the author's claim that the machine's success must force the stated choice and change our conception of human intelligence. It doesn't have to prove that computers cannot think; the difference in approach is enough to expose the gap.
- E
This explains why some people cannot play chess: perhaps they never had an opportunity to learn. But the argument concerns what a successful computer would reveal. It doesn't use people's inability to play chess as evidence of low intelligence. E answers a different question.
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