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Article 4992 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Challenge
Keywords: Searle, Chinese Room
Message-ID: <6586@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 8 Apr 92 18:29:09 GMT
References: <1992Apr1.150750.9618@cs.yale.edu> <6742@pkmab.se> <1992Apr7.223711.18902@psych.toronto.edu>
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In article <1992Apr7.223711.18902@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:

>>As I said, I might be willing to participate in a debate with a wider
>>scope, as suggested by the pro-Searle side. But if we now widen the issue
>>from being "the Chinese Room" to "syntax vs. semantics", I would expect a
>>significant risk that the Chinese Room will still be invoked rather quickly
>>as one of the arguments against Strong AI, and then we'd be back at the
>>same point again.

Well, is the AI side willing to agree that the systems reply should
not be "the system understands", because no one has shown that the
system does understand?

>> Therefore, I have to ask: would the pro-Searle side (all
>>of the participants, not only some) be willing to agree to leave the Chinese
>>Room out of the argument, as being insufficient for proving the point? If
>>they are not willing to do that, then I think we would still need to argue
>>that out before going on to any wider questions.
>
>I'd be willing to drop the Chinese Room in favor of a wider debate.  I can't,
>however, speak for my "co-religionists".

I'm not willing to drop it if that means the AI crowd will start
to claim the CR is completely losing -- see no one in comp.ai.phil
was even willing to defend it.

(NB my position is that the CR fails to show the impossibility
of strong ai but that it's useful nonetheless, in part because
it shows we should question the Turing Test.)

-- jd


