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Article 5115 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: What counts as the "Right" functional organization?
Message-ID: <1992Apr15.225342.28839@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: 15 Apr 92 22:53:42 GMT
References: <1992Apr14.142239.7807@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Apr14.181138.8475@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1992Apr15.173215.20588@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Lines: 32

In article <1992Apr15.173215.20588@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>In article <1992Apr14.181138.8475@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>
>> I hope we can avoid discussions of "what is the right functional organization
>>for belief (or understanding, etc)."  A discussion of "what is the right
>>functional organization" might be ok.  But once you pin it to terms such
>>as 'belief' or 'understanding' or 'semantics' you run into the problem of
>>these terms not being sufficiently well defined, and the discussion will
>>quickly degenerate into arguments about issues that are not really central.

>It's hard to tell, but it sounds like you're trying to avoid discussion of
>what might be the "right" functional organization because you believe it
>will ultimately be fruitless.

  Not necessarily.  I'm not against discussing functional organization.  I
just against pinning it on "understanding" or "belief" or "semantics" because
that only leads right back to the Chinese room which we surely agree is
fruitless.

  Obviously you are not going to design anything via usenet disputes, but
an open discussion of functional organization might indicate what directions
people are thinking in.  But if you insist on "understanding" as a required
part of the discussion, you bias it toward a fruitless search, partly because
this prejudges whether "understanding" is cause or effect, and partly because,
in spite of all the protestations to the contrary, "understanding" is very
slippery and hard to define.

-- 
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  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940


