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Article 4066 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: <6613@pkmab.se>
Date: 25 Feb 92 21:58:22 GMT
References: <1992Feb19.172251.7320@psych.toronto.edu> <438@tdatirv.UUCP> <1992Feb22.234830.17713@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Peridot Konsult i Mellansverige AB, Oerebro, Sweden
Lines: 28

In article <1992Feb22.234830.17713@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>Searle responds: fine. Put the whole system in the man. Have him memorize
>the symbols, the rules, etc., and get rid of the room. Have him walk about
>like a sort of Chinese deaf-mute who can only communicate via written     
>messages. Now you've got the system in the man and can discover whether the
>system understands any bettter than did the man-as-part-of-the-system.
>You ask him -- the system -- whether it understands Chinese.
>He still replies "in his native language" that he doesn't understand a
>word of Chinese.

Exactly how do you ask him? Have you considered giving him the question
written in Chinese?

I don't see why one should expect the answer to be anything but "Yes" if
you do it that way, that is, the way by which you communicate with "the
system". Asking him the question in spoken english, you are just talking
to the man alone, not bringing "the system" (of rules about how to under-
stand Chinese) into work.

To take it a step further, one could try to ask, in Chinese, whether the
system understands English (which would be the reverse of asking him in
english whether he understands Chinese). I would expect the answer to be
"No".

-- 
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


