From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aiai!jeff Thu Jan  9 10:34:24 EST 1992
Article 2585 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle, again
Message-ID: <5923@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 9 Jan 92 00:06:33 GMT
References: <5826@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1991Dec11.180924.37884@spss.com> <5907@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1992Jan8.204759.9392@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 60

In article <1992Jan8.204759.9392@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In article <5907@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>
>>If Searle's right that the CR doesn't understand chinese, it doesn't
>>matter what the program is.  That's the whole point of the "rules": to
>>be whatever program is supposedly the right one.  His argument doesn't
>>depend on it being a particular kind of program.  Since it doesn't
>>matter what the program is, it doesn't matter whether it contains
>>a "huge amount of sensory and motor experience, and the concepts
>>associated with them" (if we assume that "concepts" isn't meant
>>in some question-begging sense.)
>
>  Why don't we do a few "back of the envelope" calculations.
>
>  The brain is thought to have a lot of computational power.  Let's assume
>it is the equivalent of perhaps 1000 Cray supercomputers.
>
>  Now on doing the sort of 'syntactical table lookup' that computers do,
>a human might take at least one second, and perhaps much much more, to do
>what a Cray does in a nano-second.  So we are going to need about 10^12
>people in that Chinese room.  I hope the air conditioning is pretty powerful!

Etc.

>  All that Searle has shown that a 1950's technology computer is not
>powerful enough to emulate the mind.

This point has been made many times, in this newsgroup and elsewhere.
However, it isn't the robot reply, which is what I was discussing.
I used the formulation "if Searle is right" in order to consider
whether sensors would make any difference.  Whether he is right
has been discussed, at length, elsewhere.  If every issue has to
be addressed in every branch of the discussion, we may as well
give up.

>>Moreover, Searle presents two arguments (the Chinese Room and "syntax
>>isn't enough for semantics") that (if correct) show that something
>>that can't be captured by a program is involved.
>
> What about the following as an attempt to paraphrase the syntax/semantics
>issue:
>
>  (1)	Computations in physics require real numbers.
>
>  (2)	Computers use only 0 and 1, which are integers.
>
>  (3)	You can't get real numbers out of integers.
>
>  (4)	Therefore you cannot do computations in physics using computers.
>
> Perhaps I should comment on (3).  It may seem to be a patently false
>assumption.  But remember that the Greek geometers used geometry to deal
>with real numbers because they had serious problems dealing with (3).

Well, (1) is false, for one thing.  But if it were true, you
couldn't do those computations on computers.  As we all know,
computers have floats, not reals; and if they have arbitrary-
precision floats they're still not reals.  So if manipulations
of real numbers (as opposed to equations, treated symbolically)
are required, computers won't do.


