[drdeca]

> I'm not convinced that "capable of reasoning, but not consistently" is a meaningful claim.

Suppose an entity will consistently do reasoning well, but only when the humidity and temperature are each in a quite narrow range. It seems like it makes sense to say that such an entity is capable of reasoning. Now, suppose we don't know that the conditions for it to do reasoning well are that the humidity and temperature are in that range, we just know that sometimes it looks like it does, sometimes it looks like it doesn't (and maybe we aren't yet sure if it seeming to reason is just an illusion in the way you describe).

I think in such a situation, it would be accurate to say that it can reason, but we haven't yet found a way to make it do so consistently.

So, I think the statement that it is "capable of reasoning, but not consistently" is a meaningful statement.

However, whether it is an accurate statement is a very different question, and one which I am not claiming an answer to.