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Article 2127 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: orourke@unix1.cs.umass.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle, again
Message-ID: <40647@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 91 23:42:22 GMT
References: <1991Dec13.030010.15837@oracorp.com> <40592@dime.cs.umass.edu>
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Reply-To: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Organization: Smith College, Northampton, MA, US
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Daryl McCullough wrote (concerning interpreting Chinese Room symbol
manipulation as chess moves):
>[...]
>These two steps give us a function F from Chinese to bit streams [...]
>Similarly, we can come up with a function G from sequences of chess moves
>into compressed bit streams. Then the function  H(x) == G^{-1}(F(x)) will
>be a function taking us from a stream x of meaningful messages in Chinese
>to a stream H(x) of meaningful chess moves.
>[...]

I asked three questions earlier; here are a few more.
	4. Is the domain of the function F all finite-length "Chinese
	   messages"?  And is the domain of the funciton G all legal
	   sequences of chess moves (which are necessarily finite length)?
	   So e.g. G maps a particular sequence of chess moves to a finite
	   bit string, and G can do so for any such sequence?
	5. If so, must all Chinese messages, or all legal chess move sequences,
	   be in hand in order to specify F & G?
	6. I am a little confused about the difference between a "stream"
	   and a "sequence" and a "message."
	7. What is most unclear to me is the behavior of H.  Is the mapping
	   from some particular "stream x of meaningful messages in Chinese"
	   fixed by the structure of Chinese and chess, or is it more
	   arbitrary, depending on ordering of the messages and sequences?


