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Article 4522 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Keywords: meaning, understanding
Message-ID: <6421@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 17 Mar 92 23:52:16 GMT
References: <1992Mar10.204754.1137@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <6384@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1992Mar12.191404.1316@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
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In article <1992Mar12.191404.1316@ccu.umanitoba.ca> zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Antun Zirdum) writes:
>>>>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!

I guess he must be a complete idiot then!

>>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,

Could have fooled me.  (BTW, I am very familiar with the argument
that it's the system that understands.)

>SO your argument is without meaning

What?

>>> 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'!

Look, if you want to claim that correlation with a picture and
knowing something is a hamburger, you ought to at least be willing
to offer an argument.

> 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!

You have it backwards.  I am not arguing that because there is
a correlation there is no understanding.  I'm simply pointing
out that finding a correlation isn't necessarily the same as
finding some understanding.  For example, I could have a correlation
between a word in English and a word in Chinese, so that whenever
I thought of the English word I thought of the Chinese word too,
even if I had no idea what the Chinese word meant.

>>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!

Well, then don't assume that all humans have is information.

-- jd


