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Article 2588 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: kean@cs.ubc.ca (Alex Kean)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Understanding and the Systems Reply
Message-ID: <1992Jan9.011702.17779@cs.ubc.ca>
Date: 9 Jan 92 01:17:02 GMT
References: <1992Jan8.223252.18468@oracorp.com>
Sender: usenet@cs.ubc.ca (Usenet News)
Organization: Computer Science, University of B.C., Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 37

>     Imagine that a man memorizes a set of rules for
>     manipulating Chinese symbols in such a way that he can pass the
>     Turing Test for understanding Chinese (that is, he can converse
>     fluently in Chinese). If the rules are purely syntactic, the man
>     *still* doesn't understand Chinese. Since the man *is* the system in
>     this case, then it follows that the system doesn't understand, either.
>     So much for the Systems Reply.
>

Assumption: assume that it is possible to converse in Chinese
            (let say, Mandarin) using purely syntatic method and it
            takes many rules to do so.

Hypothesis: Maybe the purpose of having "understanding" (whatever it is)
            is that it will help in using less rules to accomplish the 
            task of having conversation.

Accepting the hypothesis means that "understanding" is actually
facilitating our ability to perform. Memorizing differential equations
versus "understanding" its principle is an example. By "understanding"
it I need not memorize many equations and instead, I can derive them.

If I assume "understanding" is facilitating our ability to perform, then
I see no reason why our "understanding" cannot be encoded and in the
same token why machine cannot have "understanding".

Best Regards,

Alex Kean <kean@cs.ubc.ca>

Department of Computer Science           
University of British Columbia
#333-6356 Agricultural Road,
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada V6T 1Z2

Tel: (604)-822-4912


