From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!cornell!uw-beaver!pauld Mon Mar  9 18:35:13 EST 1992
Article 4263 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Mar5.001144.28065@beaver.cs.washington.edu>
Sender: news@beaver.cs.washington.edu (USENET News System)
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
References: <1992Mar3.201743.20894@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Mar3.220206.6241@beaver.cs.washington.edu> <1992Mar4.210627.28060@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 92 00:11:44 GMT



In article <1992Mar4.210627.28060@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>In article <1992Mar3.220206.6241@beaver.cs.washington.edu> pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis) writes:
>>In article <1992Mar3.201743.20894@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:>>
>>>
>>>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") ?
>
>And how, pray tell, does the system "model its own symbol shuffling"
>without simply shuffling symbols?  How does this avoid being a regress?

It doesn't do anything other than shuffle symbols. The question in the
CR is not whether or not all shuffled symbols are understood, but
specifically, are the chinese symbols understood ?  The regress is
avoided because I am specifically noting that the symbols used to
provide understanding are not understood.

This a subtle variant on the systems reply, because it says that as
is, the CR does *not* understand chinese (in the subjective sense that
Searle meant), but that the same mechanisms that enable it to shuffle
chinese symbols will also enable it to gain subjective understanding.

The smoke and mirrors are only present, IMHO, in the use of the word
"subjective" and Searle and just about everybody else hasn't
contributed anything to the question of how such a thing can exist.

I note also that the idea of asking the CR "do you understand
chinese ?"  goes to part of the heart of the implausability of Searle's
gedankenexperiment. The idea that the response to this question could
be derived by simply shuffling the *same* set of symbols as were
shuffled when asked "what is 3 times 3 ?" is absurd. Asking about
internal states implies tapping into a different level of
representation that the chinese symbols exist upon. The only way out
of this is to require a handler for all questions who syntactic form
imply a "do you ..." question.  Since any handler for this that could
generate meaningful answers to the range of possible questions would
probably count as an instantiantion of personhood, and since Searle
did not describe such a handler (which clearly has to have some
semantic abilities), to ask such questions of the CR is
absurd. 

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


