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Article 2700 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: hooker@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu (Robert Hooker)
Subject: Re: Artificial Wisdom versus Artificial Intelligence
Message-ID: <1992Jan14.173118.22386@ils.nwu.edu>
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Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1992 17:31:18 GMT

In article <33442@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> fred@mole.cis.ufl.edu (Fred Buhl) 
writes:
> What these programs need to "understand" a language is other forms
> of sensory input to associate meanings with the symbols they're
> manipulating, and other forms of output to demonstrate that
> knowledge.  As a Strong AI adherent, I'd say that this is *all*
> they need to understand. 

1. I think you have an excellent point, and I agree

2.  I don't think you have solved the China Room Cross from Hell.

Lets say that our man in the China Room is given a book with two section, 
picture input and picture output.  Input lists millions of pictures with matched Chinesse Charecter strings to produce given input and Output list millions of charecter strings with pictures to be drawn.   Now our person can get sensory input in the forms
 of pictures and match them to charecters and can recieve charecter strings and produce matched picture output.

So if a person recieves a picture of a circle he knows to produce a 
certain charecter string.

And if he recieves a certain charecter string he know to produce a certain 
picture.

The production of Charecter strings for pictures and vice versa makes 
perfect sense to an outside observer, passing the Turing Test;  so does 
the China Room know Chinesse.

No.  Our little man does not know why Circle is linked to Charecter 
string.  Is he saying "THis is a circle" of is he saying "This is a zero". 
 When he is given a charecter string which is linked to the circle, what 
is the meaning of the act;

1.  Is he answering the request to make a circle
2.  Is he graphing the equation for a circle
3.  Is he subtracting 5 from 5
4.  Is he producing the first letter of the english word "order"
5.  Is he carrying out instructions in G.Spencers-Browns Laws fo Form
6.  etc etc etc

Our man does not understand what he is doing with language.  Searle point 
would still hold, simple pairing acroos input does not help.

I think your idea is very good,  it just seems to me that the entire China Room stuff is stacked against the AI researcher.  I would like to come up with a very revsion of it which shows that humans can not think, thus proving  that it is only a word game


