From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!nstn.ns.ca!aunro!ukma!wupost!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aiai!jeff Tue Jan 21 09:26:48 EST 1992
Article 2849 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Virtual Person?
Message-ID: <6011@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 17 Jan 92 21:26:40 GMT
References: <5965@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1992Jan16.040733.23764@cs.yale.edu> <1992Jan16.054723.16068@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Jan16.194359.1160@cs.yale.edu>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 43

In article <1992Jan16.194359.1160@cs.yale.edu> mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott) writes:
>  In article <1992Jan16.054723.16068@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:

>Let me try putting this argument in a clearer form, while preserving
>your suggested clarification:
>
>  Assume: There exists a program P such that a computational process
>carrying out P would constitute a mind.  ("Strong AI")
>
>  Assume: A human being could play the role of computer, and carry out
>N such computational processes (albeit slowly).  N might be 1, but it
>needn't be.

Searle doesn't say anything about N such processes, does he?
At least not in, say, the Reith Lectures.  Moreover, the Chinese
Room loses much of what makes it different from other arguments
if it's not in terms of understanding Chinese (or some other
language the person in the Room doesn't understand).

If you want to say this is an argument Searle could have made
(should have made?), that might be ok.  You might even be able
to tie it into some of the arguments Searle presents along with
the Chinese Room.  But I don't think this is the Chinese Room
argument that he actually makes.

>Does everyone agree that this is Searle's argument in a nutshell?
>Getting this kind of agreement would be an achievement. 

Well, I don't, for one.

Indeed, no matter what we conclude for this argument, I think
there would still be interest in the one in which the issue
is understanding Chinese.

I suspect that part of what you're doing is to make one argument,
which includes a response to the systems reply and the issue of
multiple persons in one, out of the different arguments Searle
presents.  The arguments appeared in a dialog.  Searle presented the
Chinese Room, someone made the systems reply, and Searle answered
that.  In my opinion, too many distortions are introduced by turning
the dialog into a single argument.

-- jd


