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>From: tp0x+@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price)
Subject: Re: Table-lookup Chinese speaker
Message-ID: <1992Jan22.190405.118852@cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 92 19:04:05 GMT
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Apologies if my thoughts are old to these newsgroups.

But it seems to me that Searle's Chinese room is essentially a rhetorical
maneuver, designed to confuse the issue of Artificial Intelligence. The
problem whether or not 'intentionality' can be ascribed to the system, or the 
tables, is no different than the more general problem of ascribing 
'intentionality' to any set-up which can pass the Turing test. Searle's fame
has resulted from his restatement of the problem in such a way that a 
recognizable sentience is in the loop. I don't see that it changes the problem
at all, although at first glance it seems to. If there is intentionality
then it inheres in the system and the fact that part of the system has its
own intentionality is a red herring.

A response which I have heard (reportedly Searle's own) is this: "All right.
Let's do away with the room and the tables and have our operator memorize
all the contents of the tables, so that if you write him a message in Chinese
he can write you a response. Does he understand Chinese? Is there 
'intentionality' to his responses?" It seems to me that he will very soon.
How could a human operator avoid assigning human meaning to the symbols which
he manipulates? If I'm in a foreign land and every time someone approaches
me they smile and say "mertilator", and I learn that to say "mertilator"
back is appropriate, I'm not simply following rules -- I will actually believe
that "mertilator" is a greeting. Supposing that I have memorized the tables
for Chinese responses, I will soon begin assigning "meaning" to the symbols.

(It is painfully obvious that these are only intuitions. Heck, it's a thought 
experiment after all.)

This whole process wouldn't, then, seem to be too different from the process
of learning a foreign language. Perhaps that was Searle's point. But if so,
then my original point that The Chinese Room is a rhetorically misleading
statement of the real point, containing a couple of red herrings, stands.

I am aware that I have not read as much of the literature on this issue as
I would like to have, and that I may be coming late to several threads.
Gentle responses will be carefully and gratefully considered.

Tom

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Tom Price		
tp0x@cs.cmu.edu                         Disclaimer: Free Will? What Free Will?






