From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aiai!jeff Thu Feb 20 15:21:59 EST 1992
Article 3852 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Evidence that would falsify strong AI.
Message-ID: <6206@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 18 Feb 92 23:10:50 GMT
References: <1992Jan30.172057.7114@oracorp.com> <6185@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1992Feb14.221018.22990@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
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In article <1992Feb14.221018.22990@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>In article <6185@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>In article <1992Jan30.172057.7114@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com writes:
>>>I believe that he already answered that. He knows what it means for
>>>Colin Garety to understand something, but he doesn't know what it
>>>means for you to understand something. It is quite clear from the
>>>endless debates on this subject that there is no agreed-upon meaning
>>>of what it means for someone to understand.
>>
>>I don't think there's any great difficulty in understanding the
>>difference between such things as reading a book written in a
>>language one knows and reading one in a language one doesn't.
>>That's the kind of "understanding" that's involved in the
>>Chinese Room.
>>
>Has it happened to you that you read something, you understand all words but
>still do not understand what the story is about?

Yes.  So?

>You seem to completely disregard the fact that 'understanding' has a lot of
>'faces'. 

No I don't.  I just note that Searle's example points fairly clearly
to one of them.

>That is why some people (me including) ask for defintion to make sure
>that we are talking about the same thing.

If that's all you wanted to know, you could _offer_ definitions,
and let the other side tell you if they agreed (or perhaps offer
an alternative).

I have no objection to people trying to make sure they understand
each other.  I do have objections to demanding definitions as a
way to shift the burden of proof.

>>It's sufficient for me to see what difference is being considered.
>>All the noise about "what does understand really mean" looks like
>>just another way to avoid thinking about Searle's argument.
>>
>>Moreover, since a lot of people have little trouble in rejecting
>>Searle's conclusion, without resolving exactly what "understand"
>>means, I find it hard to see why it's such a problem.
>>
>May be some of them reject Searle's conclusion because  they feel that the
>whole argument is using notions which are not sufficiently well defined.

And is Searle explaiting this in some way?  If there's some
equivocation in Searle's argument, why not point it out?

Or do these people think the notions are so ill-defined that we
can't conclude anything one way or the other?

Or do they think only behavioral definitions can be sufficiently
well-defined?

There are many possibilities.  People who want defintions should
say why.

-- jd


