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Article 3023 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Virtual Person?
Message-ID: <1992Jan22.211949.30986@spss.com>
Date: 22 Jan 92 21:19:49 GMT
References: <1992Jan19.022136.29207@cs.yale.edu> <1992Jan19.211715.9777@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <6025@skye.ed.ac.uk>
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In article <6025@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>The systems reply attacks (2).  Searle tries to strengthen (2)
>by saying he could memorize the program.  But Searle also says
>some other things, such as: if the person doesn't understand,
>how can the conjunction of the person and some pieces of paper
>understand? 

What other things does he say to counter the systems reply?  Neither of
these is satisfactory.

a. Memorizing the program might simply be impossible-- the program is too
big.  Or memorizing it might create a portion of Searle's brain that
does understand Chinese.

b. If you wonder how "pieces of paper" can understand, you have to wonder
how "pieces of protoplasm" can understand.  Since we don't have a well-defined
notion of what "understanding" is, I wouldn't trust our intuitions about
what kinds of physical objects can understand farther than I can kick a piano.


