From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!csd.unb.ca!morgan.ucs.mun.ca!nstn.ns.ca!aunro!ukma!wupost!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aiai!jeff Thu Jan 16 17:19:36 EST 1992
Article 2634 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: <5944@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 10 Jan 92 18:31:46 GMT
References: <5907@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1992Jan8.204759.9392@mp.cs.niu.edu> <5923@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1992Jan10.043433.15202@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 43

In article <1992Jan10.043433.15202@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In article <5923@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>In article <1992Jan8.204759.9392@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>>
>>>  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!
>
>>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.
>
> Actually it is very much related to the robot reply.

Not in a relevant way.  You can make the same point about the Chinese
Room being physically incapable of doing the work without bringing in
sensors at all.

>If the robot has huge numbers of sensors, and "grows up" in a
>chinese community learning the way a human would,

Growing up is another false trail.  Searle's argument is about
all programs, whether they're written by growing up or in some
other way.

>   The "error"
>in (1) is no more serious than the error in your comment in an earlier
>posting when you suggested that data can be constants in the program, so is
>syntax.

I have difficulty parsing that sentence, and I don't know what you're
fererring to by "constants".  I can't find anything in which I said
some data could be constants.

>  You can call it syntax if you like, but it could still represent
>semantics with sufficient accuracy.

How do ou know?


