From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!christo Mon Mar  9 18:35:16 EST 1992
Article 4269 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <44256@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Mar3.203249.23251@psych.toronto.edu> <44318@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Message-ID: <1992Mar5.045620.22463@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1992 04:56:20 GMT

In article <44318@dime.cs.umass.edu> orourke@sophia.smith..edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>In article <1992Mar3.203249.23251@psych.toronto.edu> 
>	christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>
>If you ask him in Chinese which are nouns and which are verbs, "he"
>would answer correctly.  He the Chinese-speaker acts as if he knows.
>What you are denying is that the system's-eye view has any relevance.
>
Even if I were to grant that the Chinese-speaking "system within"
would give the right answers, you'd have to explain to me how "it"
managed to get semantics (viz. refernence). Unless you are willing
to commit to semantic functionalism, and I believe that is an 
ultimately untenable position, no account that I can think of is
possible. 

>  >>		1. The man really does understand Chinese, [...]
>
>>This is obscurantism as well. 
>
>"Obscurantism" is opposition to the spread of knowledge, or deliberate
>vagueness.  Which meaning do you intend?

Alright. Since obscurantism seems to have pejorative overtones, let's
try another, hopefully more precise, term. I think this usage turns on
an equivocation of the term "understand".  He may "understand" in some
oddly technical sense of the term, specially constructed to support this
interpretation of events, but he doesn't understand in anything like the
way the term is ordinarily used, or in the sense which motivated the
question to begin with. Better?
-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
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