From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aisb!jeff Fri Jan 31 10:26:50 EST 1992
Article 3248 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aisb!jeff
>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Evidence that would falsify strong AI. (Re: Cargo Cult Science)
Message-ID: <1992Jan29.005707.10538@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 29 Jan 92 00:57:07 GMT
References: <1992Jan22.212846.24969@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> <14730001@hpfcbig.SDE.HP.COM>
Sender: news@aisb.ed.ac.uk (Network News Administrator)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 35

In article <14730001@hpfcbig.SDE.HP.COM> gerety@hpfcbig.SDE.HP.COM (Colin Gerety) writes:
>
>> Jeff Dalton
>> ...
>> since it's clear that some of the demands for definitions of,
>> say, "understanding", won't be satisfied by anything less than an
>> operational test.
>
>> What I find strange in all this is that anyone should find it
>> a mystery what "understand Chinese" means.  Can these people
>> really no distinguish between such things as reading a book
>> written in a language they know and reading one in a language
>> they don't?  Do they really think they can't answer this
>> question until someone tells them what "know" means?
>
>  I have little trouble figuring out the extent to which I understand
>Chinese.  The chinese room leads to the question "How can I tell whether
>you understand Chinese?"

The question is: do you have some difficulty in knowing what
understand means?

>  These are, of course, completely different.  To decide whether YOU
>understand Chinese, I do need an operational test.


But what it your test a test for?  That's where the question of
"what is understanding?" comes in.

The problem with the demand for an operational test as a _definition_
of understanding is that then the test is just a test for ... passing
the test.

But some people will call any definition ill-defined or unclear
unless it directly corresponds to some test.


