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Article 1806 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk (Gordon Joly)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle (was Re: Daniel Dennett (was Re: Comme
Message-ID: <2129@ucl-cs.uucp>
Date: 2 Dec 91 18:08:42 GMT
Sender: news@cs.ucl.ac.uk
Lines: 32

>> 
>> In Searle's hypothetical case, the man's ordinary personality is
>> interpreting a description the hypothetical Chinese personality that
>> has different knowledge from the man's ordinary personality.  There
>> should be no difficulty in understanding this.
>> --
>> John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
>> *
>> He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

We may have moved on, but I am at a loss to see where personality
comes into all this. It seems to be absent from the original Gedanken.

The persona of the English speaker answers the question, sitting in
his English cultural background. He then translates the answers back
into the Chinese script.

sed -e 's/personality/lingustic ability/g' < above > new

perhaps?

Did Searle really believe that the Room had a "Chinese personality"?
No, the question he framed was, does the Room "speak Chinese" (with
respect to the Turing Test).

____

Gordon Joly                    G6DFY              +44 71 387 7050 ext 3716
Internet: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk          UUCP: ...!{uunet,ukc}!ucl-cs!G.Joly
Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, LONDON WC1E 6BT

  he said what? - he said "hello" -- that's a bit aggressive isn't it?


