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Article 3684 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Robotic Follies
Message-ID: <6172@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 12 Feb 92 21:05:33 GMT
References: <1992Feb7.110004.8578@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Feb10.205727.3829@aisb.ed.ac.uk> <OZ.92Feb11131344@ursa.sis.yorku.ca>
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In article <OZ.92Feb11131344@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes:
>jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>
>   (4) In many cases, the quality of the discussion would be improved
>   if the participants had to do some reading rather than just respond
>   to postings with whatever their views were at the moment.
>
>Given that Chalmers made a detailed bibliography available, Would you
>say that the quality of your "Chinese Room" discussions improved as a
>result of all that reading? For some reason, I kept thinking that you
>were just responding with whatever your views were at that moment ...  ;-)

I guess I must just have memorized the quotes from Searle that I
posted; and I was just mistaken (I don't want to say you are calling
me a liar) when I said I'd just re-read this or that paper?  (I here
refer only to instances that could be immediately evident from my
articles.)

In any case, what does it matter what I did?  You have to ask yourself
what you want to do.  Zeleny can be a useful resource, and you don't
have to get into flame wars with him.  Indeed, you don't have to
reply to him at all.  But if you'd rather spend you time keeping your
side of the flame war alight, that's up to you.  

I address this to you because I think you're a reasonable person, and
because I think it's more likely that you'll initiate a change in
approach than that MZ will.  And I wrote my previous article because
it seemed that some of aspects of MZ's postings were being overlooked.
I've been attacked by him, too, but I've also found him helpful.
(And his attacks can be entertaining.)

Anyway, to answer you, and Stephen Smoliar, who wrote

   It is also a sad truth that not all subscribers have access to a
   well-endowed library.  Just because they lack the resources to do
   the necessary homework, should they be attacked for trying to
   contribute?
224z
I tried to phrase my point 4 carefully.  I said "if the participants
had to do some reading", not "if the participants did some reading"; I
said "if", not "only if"; and I said "in many cases", not "in all cases".
And one way in which the discussion would be improved is that it would
slow down.  The sheer volume of articles is now so great that I'd
be surprised if anyone had time left for thinking about the issues 
after reading them all.

>Do you find any of the published refutations of "Chinese Room" worthy
>of discussion?

Setting aside the implication that anything referred to as a
refutation must have succeeded, yes.  Dennett in _Elbow Room_ 
for one.

-- jd


