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Article 4232 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Mar3.220206.6241@beaver.cs.washington.edu>
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Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
References: <1992Feb29.162020.9271@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Mar3.025214.26880@smsc.sony.com> <1992Mar3.201743.20894@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 92 22:02:06 GMT

In article <1992Mar3.201743.20894@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>In article <1992Mar3.025214.26880@smsc.sony.com> markc@smsc.sony.com (Mark Corscadden) writes:
>>
>>Can you imagine memorizing a large look-up table of actions and then
>>carrying out the actions called for by the table without ever having
>>any personal understanding of the purpose behind the actions?  Even
>>when virtually anyone in a position to watch your table-driven actions
>>from, say, an outside perspective unavailable to you, would have no problem
>>understanding their purpose?  I have no trouble imagining such a state
>>of affairs.  
>
>Neither do I. And it's clear from your description that the person engaging
>in the activities would not UNDERSTAND what they were doing, whereas a
>native Chinese speaker does. This is the point. Whether or not others
>can make sense of their behavior is irrelevant.

Chris, why must you always attack strawmen ? Why bother with easy
questions ("does a system that shuffles symbols understand the
symbols") when more interesting and difficult ones are around ("does a
system that models its own symbol shuffling understand the symbols") ?

If the person engaged in the above activity were to spend several
years watching their own responses to the queries, what makes you so
certain that they would not then understand at least some of the
symbols ? 

Such "watching" could doubtless consist of shuffling *different*
symbols, and needless to say, the person wouldn't have any
understanding, just like you or I, of what these were or meant.
However, what their manipulation would give rise to understanding of
the first set of symbols (the chinese ones).

-- paul
-- 
Computer Science Laboratory	  "truth is out of style" - MC 900ft Jesus
University of Washington 		<pauld@cs.washington.edu>


