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Article 3840 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <6199@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 18 Feb 92 20:29:56 GMT
References: <1992Feb18.153833.10164@oracorp.com>
Sender: news@aiai.ed.ac.uk
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
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In article <1992Feb18.153833.10164@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com writes:
>Michael Gemar writes:
>
>> When Steven Harnad came to the University of Toronto to give a
>> colloquium on *his* solution to the Chinese Room, he noted, "Everyone
>> thinks that defining understanding is so difficult.  Well, here..." at
>> which point he spouted something entirely incomprehensible in a
>> non-English language.  "There," he said, "that was Hungarian.  Did you
>> understand that?  If not, then you know what understanding
>> involves..."
>
>In my opinion, Harnad was being silly. There is a common core of
>meaning to the word "understand", which is that lack of competence in
>a language implies lack of understanding. This is the case with my
>lack of understanding of Hungarian (or Chinese). This common core of
>meaning does not suffice to answer questions such as "does the Chinese
>Room understand?"

In my opinion, Harned has it exactly right.  Searle's point is that
the Chinese Room "doesn't understand" in that same sense of understand.
It doesn't know what any of it means.  And the systems reply is that
the system might understand even though parts of it didn't.  This
debate can be conducted without having to pin down exactly what 
"understand" means.

Your claim that the common core is that lack of competence in a language
implies lack of understanding, is just another way to fail to see the
point.  And, as always, you leave little, if any, role for subjective
experience.

However, I have no doubt that those who disagree with Harnad can
prolong the debate on this point.  It's always possible to "you're
beign silly", "it doesn't answer the question", and so on forever.

-- jd


