From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael Mon Mar  9 18:35:57 EST 1992
Article 4330 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael
>From: michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <1992Mar2.190455.17079@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1992Mar2.214012.22715@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Mar6.150444.22289@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Message-ID: <1992Mar6.221220.23465@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1992 22:12:20 GMT

In article <1992Mar6.150444.22289@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In article <1992Mar2.214012.22715@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>>In article <1992Mar2.190455.17079@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>
>>> It is not difficult to take a reasonably bright 10 year old, and teach him
>>>the manipulations of the Euclidean algorithm for computing greatest common
>>>divisors.  And you can do so as a purely mechanical operation.  If asked,
>>>he would answer that he knows nothing about greatest common divisors or
>>>how to compute them.  Yet clearly the system does.
>>
>>Nonsense.  This "system" *understands* nothing.  It is merely a formal
>>syntactic system.  Just like the child, it has *nothing* in it that
>>refers to "greatest common divisors" and the like.
>
>  You do like to misconstrue what I say.
>

My apologies.  If there has been some sort of misconstrual, it was not
intentional.  However, I do think that the implications of your statements
above are accurately reflected in my response.  You say, "[the child]
KNOWS nothing about the greatest common divisors...Yet clearly the system
does [KNOW ABOUT THEM]."  I took "know" to be synonymous in this instance
with "understands".  I take this to be a fairly common way of interpreting
this word.  If you meant something else, you're welcome to clarify. 

>  I very carefully avoided any statement about "understanding" in that
>paragraph you quote.  Yet you immediately accuse me of saying that the
>system understands.
>
>  My one and only point is that it is very common for people to perform
>complex algorithms without having any understanding of the algorithm or
>its implications.  Thus, if we assume that a human can perform the
>CR algorithm, and if we assume that the CR algorithm does "understand", it
>is a quite incredible leap to assume that the human would also automatically
>understand Chinese.

But what is missing here is an explanation of how the "complex algorithm"
has "understanding of its implications", as it must in the CR case in order
for there to be understanding.

- michael



