From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!wupost!uunet!psinntp!scylla!daryl Wed Feb 26 12:53:41 EST 1992
Article 3932 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!wupost!uunet!psinntp!scylla!daryl
>From: daryl@oracorp.com
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Feb22.181122.12088@oracorp.com>
Organization: ORA Corporation
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1992 18:11:22 GMT

Christopher Green 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..."

> The question is "Does the Chinese room understand *Chinese*?" Insofar
> as I understand, this is the ONLY question relevant to the Chinese
> room. It is the aritificial intelligentsia who have tried to make the
> question obscure.  Searle's question was very straightforward, and
> Harnad's explication is dead on.

Well, I disagree on almost every point. I don't think Searle's
question was straightforward, I don't think Harnad's explication
helped at all, and I don't think AI types are trying to make the word
"understanding" obscure; quite the opposite.

Harnad's little bit of rhetoric was much like (some of) Searle's
arguments; the purpose is not to clarify anything, but to ridicule
opponents.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY



