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Article 3943 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: ske@pkmab.se (Kristoffer Eriksson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <6594@pkmab.se>
Date: 20 Feb 92 10:07:15 GMT
References: <1992Feb18.153833.10164@oracorp.com> <6199@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Peridot Konsult i Mellansverige AB, Oerebro, Sweden
Lines: 25

In article <6199@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>In article <1992Feb18.153833.10164@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com writes:
>>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.

I fail to see how Harnad contributes anything to the question of whether
the Chinese Room understands anything, at least not in a way that supports
Searle. If you apply Harnad's test to the room, would the room not act like
someone that does understand Chinese (if the room functions)? And the
introspective aspect of the test (that you don't understand a thing of his
Hungarian uttering), which probably is the most impressing aspect of it,
doesn't contribute anything, since you can't introspect on someone else
or on the room. All that is left is mostly just the usual Turing Test.

-- 
Kristoffer Eriksson, Peridot Konsult AB, Hagagatan 6, S-703 40 Oerebro, Sweden
Phone: +46 19-13 03 60  !  e-mail: ske@pkmab.se
Fax:   +46 19-11 51 03  !  or ...!{uunet,mcsun}!mail.swip.net!kullmar!pkmab!ske


