From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!christo Wed Feb 26 12:53:43 EST 1992
Article 3935 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Feb22.234252.17095@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <1992Feb19.013515.26133@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1992Feb19.172251.7320@psych.toronto.edu> <43686@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1992 23:42:52 GMT

In article <43686@dime.cs.umass.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>In article <1992Feb19.172251.7320@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>>[re Chinese room]
>>The systems response [is] one of the more intelligent ones, 
>>although Searle replied to it in 1980 in BBS, and again in 1991 in 
>>_Scientific American_. So far, I've never heard a good counter-reply.
>
>Douglas Hofstadter provides a counter-reply in "The Minds I."

Please tell me what you find "good" about Hofstadter & Dennett's reply.
I have it here in front of me and it seems to boil down to "no human
could ever memorize all those symbols and rules."  From a philsophical
perspective, this is no argument at all. Searle is *giving* his 
opponents that a human could accomplish this astounding feat (just
as he gives them the possibility that a language could be reduced to
a finite set of rules; a matter which leads to all sorts of confusion).
The point is that *even under these improbable conditions* -- conditions
which work to the advantage of the strong-AIist -- you can still show
that the system has no understanding.

Care to comment?

>Dennett says in "Consciousness Explained" that Searle has never
>refuted Hofstadter's counter-reply.  So whether there has never been
>a "good counter-reply" is a matter of opinion.

Undoutedly. Please justify yours.

-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
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