From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!christo Wed Feb 26 12:53:51 EST 1992
Article 3949 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Feb24.045039.13219@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <43686@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Feb22.234252.17095@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Feb23.044200.29383@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1992 04:50:39 GMT

In article <1992Feb23.044200.29383@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In article <1992Feb22.234252.17095@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>>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).
>
>  Yes indeed.  It is very generous of Searle to give this single human the
>superhuman ability to perform a task that might require a billion concurrent
>human minds.
>
>  But what the left hand giveth, the right hand taketh away.  After granting
>the superhuman powers to allow him to perform the task, Searle suddenly
>strips away all the extra power, and asks whether the single human mind
>remaining could, merely by having shared the same body as those billion
>concurrent minds, now understand Chinese.
>
I'm sure you'll not be surprised to find that I disagree. What "extra
power" is it that Searle "strips away"? The problem is that whether they
are in a book, or in the man's head, the rules are purely syntactic. The
man is still operating in an interpretational vacuum. What he doesn't
have is the symbols' meanings. And it is meaning that is necessary for
understanding.

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