From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!pindor Thu Jan 16 17:19:20 EST 1992
Article 2606 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Penrose on Man vs. Machine
Message-ID: <1992Jan9.211337.14379@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCS Public Access
References: <1992Jan7.031553.24886@oracorp.com> <1992Jan7.105117.7193@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Jan7.191853.17310@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <5925@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1992 21:13:37 GMT

In article <5925@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>In article <1992Jan7.191853.17310@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>
>>It would save a lot of time and bandwidth if we first decided what is meant by
>>'undertanding'. Is there an unambiguous definition of the notion of
....
>
>Actually, it would _waste_ a lot of time arguing about definitions
>of understanding.
>
>>In my opinion much of the Chinese Room discussion falls into this category.
>
>One of the virtues of the Chinese Room is that it relies on our
>ability to distinguish between languages we can understand and
>ones we cannot, something we can do without much worry about how
>"understand" in this sense is defined.

I have to disagree. Understanding a language is an issue burdened with too many
irrelevant (for the present purpose) side issues. Note how much traffic was
generated by rising a problem of sensory input. Someone even claimed that there
can be no understanding without sensory input! That is why I've proposed 
feeding CR with abstract math problems instead of a story about hamburgers (it
also avoids a discussion whether hamburgers are a PC food or not!).
I make an assumption that in general opinion word 'understanding' can be 
applied in a case like 'understanding abstract group theory'. If someone
disagrees, s/he needs to read no furthur.
Let's now consider Searle approaching the CR (perhaps we should refer to it now
as a Group Theory Room), which is sealed, with a friend who knows (understands)
group theory. They feed the CR with basics of group theory and start asking it
(It?) questions. Searle's friend looks at the answers and decides that 'this
beast understands group theory!'. Searle of course is not happy and wants to 
look inside. They open the Room and find inside a person with a big rule book.
It turns out that the person him(her)self does not know group theory at all!
'Ah' says Searle, 'I knew it!. There is no understanding here, manipulating
symbols according to some rules is not understanding!'.
However, how does Searle know that the person inside does not understand the
group theory? He makes his friend to ask the person questions to find out if
he/she gives correct answers. If the person gave the correct answers, would
Searle demand to open his/hear head to see inside if there is understanding
there? And if he did look inside the person's head, would it help him to know
if there is understanding inside?
In brief: Searle is using different criteria to determine if the CR understands
something (group theory, chinese, or whatever) than the ones he applies to 
a person (inside). The whole argument is from the begining stack against CR
and hence is invalid. Only by using the same criteria can we validly determine
if the both system (a person and the CR) posess the same attribute (of 
understanding).
Of course, if it could be proven that here are math questions which can be 
answered correctly by a human but cannot be arrived at by syntactical 
manipulations, then the Group Theory Room would at certain stage reveal its
lack of 'understanding', but as far as I understand (!?) this is very
controversial. Mr. Zeleny was talking for instance about me being able to
'grasp' a notion of 'finitude' (thanks, Mr. Zeleny), which is completely 
accessible to a computer program. Note please that there are compilers which 
can discover inifinte loops in computer programs (and warn a user). Can't it
be said that they 'understand' a notion of 'finitude'?


-- 
Andrzej Pindor
University of Toronto
Computing Services
pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca


