From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!convex!constellation!a.cs.okstate.edu!onstott Mon Mar  9 18:33:01 EST 1992
Article 4056 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
References: <1992Feb26.021000.29992@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1992Feb26.165452.7666@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Feb26.190407.5123@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
Message-ID: <1992Feb27.025740.8034@a.cs.okstate.edu>
Organization: Oklahoma State University, Computer Science, Stillwater
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 92 02:57:40 GMT

In article <1992Feb26.190407.5123@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>
>  The question -- and there is no obviously correct answer to
>it -- is whether, once the man has internalized the Chinese
>speaking machinery, it should be counted as part of him.  If
>so, then since part of him understands Chinese, *he* understands
>Chinese, so he is wrong.  If not, he is right.  In either case
>it still makes pefect sense to say that the Chinese-speaking
>system understands Chinese.
>
>	-- Bill

  Either I have missed something entirely, or there is something severly
lacking in this entire discussion of the Chinese Room understanding
Chinese.  The argumentation has been one sided thus far as it seems
to hold the following:

  1.) Any system which can take in inputs and produce properly corresponding
  outputs is considered a chinese-speaking system.

  2.) The system actually "understands" chinese because the real chinese
  speaker "understands" the outputs.  (Also, this already brings about
  some implicit difference between the system and the real chinese speaker).

The side missing, and mentioned at the same time, is the questions, or
the originial generations of those questions (or squiggle-squaggles).
In other words, it appears that everyone is caught up with the systems
ability to respond to the questions being made by the chinese speaker
to the system, and, at the same time ignoring the fact that the system
is completely incapable of generating its own outputs which would be
original and free from context of the questions being asked.

In other words, can the system, non chinese speaking, generate its own
questions out of its own curiosity, or better still, can the system 
translate from its native tongue to that of chinese?  It appears that
this debate is only focusing on the fact that the inputs are already 
in chinese and that the outputs are chinese.  It seems to ignore that
the system is uncapable of translating from its own language to another(that
of Chinese).  

I would suggest that unless the system can translate the language from
its original tongue to that of chinese or be capable of generating its
own originial statements free of context from the ones being presented
to it, the system has altogether failed to understand anything at all.

There is a creative component inherent in understanding that seems to
be entirely ignored.  I could, for example, purchase a book on 
set theory and site examples from that book over the internet and impress
on people that I indeed understand set theory.  However, I do not know
anything about set theory and, thus, I can not claim to understand it.
If I did know something about set theory, I could not claim to understand
it until I was able to apply it creatively to a problem.  Passing tokens
around blindily in no way indicates understanding, rather application
and origination of those tokens does.  

BCnya,
  Charles O. Onstott, III

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Charles O. Onstott, III                  P.O. Box 2386
Undergraduate in Philosophy              Stillwater, Ok  74076
Oklahoma State University                onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu

"The most abstract system of philosophy is, in its method and purpose, 
nothing more than an extremely ingenious combination of natural sounds."

                                              -- Carl G. Jung
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