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Article 4153 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: fred@mole.cis.ufl.edu (Fred Buhl)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Keywords: Searle Chinese Dead Horses
Message-ID: <34431@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>
Date: 28 Feb 92 13:58:11 GMT
References: <1992Feb23.071810.16573@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <34375@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <1992Feb27.180811.4244@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Sender: news@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU
Organization: Univ. of Florida CIS Dept.
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>I also presume that the chinese speaker in the man would be able to
>answer questions about his current circumstances, which I take it to
>mean that it is somehow connected to his senses.  So when he sees a
>dog, the chinese symbols for dog come up (semantics?), also when he is
>asked in chinese "what is that" he would manipulate symbols - and
>eventually would learn that the chinese dog symbol meant 'dog' (or do
>you think that his english speaking side is automatically suspended
>when his chinese side is working?)

You presume too much.  The guy in the CR has no access to the outside world
except the scraps of paper.  That brings up my main reason Why the Chinese
Room (or the Man in It) Can't Understand What He's Writing: He's got no way to
assign meanings to his symbols, since his only I/O is thru the scraps of
paper.  (Can you know what a frobnatz is without ever having seen one?  Could
you learn English via a terminal, with no other forms of I/O?).  You
circumvent this problem with your intelligence transplant scenario.

IMHO, the reason the CR is so seductive is that we don't have experience with
agents that have knowledge shoved in their brain like this, aside from
instinctual behaviors (which we will often use to mistakenly ascribe far more
intelligence than the agent possesses).  Most of those instinctual behaviors
are relatively low-level, so when we picture an agent using a high-level thing
like language, we tend to give it the benefit of the doubt.  In the Real
World, in order to speak a human language, you must be able to _learn_ it.
The CR as described is of course incapable of learning.  It's "instincts"
include written Chinese.

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Fred Buhl, Grad Student        A proud member of the Union of
UF Computer Science Dept.      Unconcerned Scientists.       
fred@reef.cis.ufl.edu          "Ants are smart.  _Really_ smart." 
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