From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!mips!atha!aunro!alberta!kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca!access.usask.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!zirdum Mon Mar  9 18:34:09 EST 1992
Article 4160 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Antun Zirdum)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Keywords: Searle Chinese Dead Horses
Message-ID: <1992Feb29.090346.13556@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Date: 29 Feb 92 09:03:46 GMT
References: <34375@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <1992Feb27.180811.4244@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <34431@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Lines: 43

In article <34431@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> fred@mole.cis.ufl.edu (Fred Buhl) writes:
>>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
>
>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.

Ah my freind, the question is not whether the Chinese room can
understand frobnatz (without seeing one) its whether a BLIND MAN
can understand frobnatz without seeing one? So you say that
a blind man cannot understand things that he does not see.
In my recollection, Hellen Kehler (sp?) did just fine understanding
the world, while she had neither the sense of sight or hearing!
Did you know she read, and typed Braille - you should read her
autobiography sometime!

>
>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.
>
You are wrong about one thing above. The Chinese room is capable
of learning. What do you suppose happens to all those slips of 
paper that are passed into the CR? They are of course saved, and
referenced for later use by the system. (just what do you think 
would happen if you asked the CR to repeat the previous 10 questions?)
Learning - voila!
-- 
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*   AZ    -- zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca                            *
*     " The first hundred years are the hardest! " - W. Mizner  *
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