From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Thu Jan 16 17:20:13 EST 1992
Article 2694 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Cargo Cult Science
Message-ID: <368@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 13 Jan 92 22:51:50 GMT
References: <1992Jan9.182848.999@oracorp.com> <5947@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 37

In article <5947@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
|Hardly anyone on the net ever stops with saying Searle has
|failed to show the Chinese Room doesn't think.  Indeed, the
|system reply is often stated as "the system understands",
|and not as "Searle has failed to show the system does not
|understand".

Quite right.  Part of this is because we cannot see how such complex behavior
is even *possible* without understanding.  Thus, if the CR exists and behaves
as postulated it understands.

In short I (and others) are operating on the basis of the theorem:

	If a system can undertake arbitrary conversations in a given
	language then it understands that language.

|And then there are the long and frepeated disccussions in 
|which people argue again and again that anything with the
|right behavior does understand.  Are you seriously suggesting
|that this doesn't happen?

Yes, at least in the case of full competence in a language.
Eliza/Doctor is a joke, I was falling out of my seat laughing within minutes
of being introduced to the program.

Full competence means the ability to respond appropriately to new or
unanticipated inputs.  It means the ability to reference prior events
in the dialog, or in prior dialogs.  I means the ability to adapt verbal
behavior to changing circumstances (like learning new words and so on).

I cannot see that *any* concievable cheat (like table lookup) is capable
of producing the proper adaptability in behavior to meet the postulated
level of competence in Chinese.
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)



