From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!zirdum Tue Mar 24 09:55:26 EST 1992
Article 4435 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Antun Zirdum)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Keywords: meaning, understanding
Message-ID: <1992Mar12.191404.1316@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Date: 12 Mar 92 19:14:04 GMT
References: <1992Mar6.214616.18384@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Mar10.204754.1137@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <6384@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Lines: 71

>>>No special analysis of understanding is required.
>
>Are there any published discussions of Searle that have such a problem
>with the word "understanding"?  I haven't noticed it in the things I've
>read.  Is there really a big mystery about what "understand Chinese"
>means?
>
Searle clearly does not *understand* what the system reply is!
Searle does not know what it means to understand Chinese or any
language!

>It seems to me that the anti-Searle side is resorting to some rather
>desperate strategies these days, like supposing that the person in
>the Chinese Room might be mistake about whether or not they understand
>Chinese, or else trying to put off any consideration of Searle's
>argument by endless disputes over the word "understand".
>
Please understand that the AI side never wanted to imply that the
person inside the room would understand chinese, this would be like
saying that a certain part of your brain *understands*, or do you
want to imply that your neurons understand? It is not the neurons
that understand, it is the person! Same with the Chinese room, it
is not the components of the CR that understand it is the CR itself!

SO your argument is without meaning, I and everyone else concede that
the person in the chinese room does not understand chinese!!!!!!!
The system (the room/symbols/person/etc..) does on the other hand
understand chinese, and it could demonstrate it! (This is the
part that Searle does not understand, and apparently you as well!)
>> Problem, which I have tried to point out in the past, is in the
>> content of the database for the Chinese squiggles. English word
>> `hamburger` correlates in the English person's mind for instance with
>> a mental picture of hamburger - the person had seen a hamburger in the
>> past and knew this object was 'a hamburger'.
>
>But these are two different things!  (Being correlated with a picture
>vs knowing a certain object was a hamburger.)
>
You say 'tomata', I say 'tomaato'! Just because I look in your
brain with a brain scanner and say 'hey, you don't understand
what hamburger means, all I see when you look at a hamburger
is a correlation of the image in your eyes with a mental map!
And that does not constitute understanding!'
You would argue (and so would the computer), but I do indeed
know what hamburger means!

>>If the database for Chinese squiggles had a picture of hamburger correlated 
>>with the corresponding squiggle (and the same for other squiggles), would you
>>still maintain that the person would not understand what he/she is doing?
>
>I don't see why adding links between meaningless symbols would make
>much difference.  Can you say why it should?
>
>> If you insist that the person has to `understand` what the squiggles
>> represent, you have to provide him/her with the same info about the
>> squiggles as he/she has about English words.
>
>But this is a different case again.  You can't just assume that all
>the information humans have is just a matter of correlations between
>meaningless squiggles.  Indeed, maybe it's not possible to put all the
>information into a database.
>
If it cannot be put into a database, it is not information!
>-- jd


-- 
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*   AZ    -- zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca                            *
*     " The first hundred years are the hardest! " - W. Mizner  *
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