From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!christo Tue Mar 24 09:58:03 EST 1992
Article 4665 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Oil for the Chinese Fire
Organization: Dept. of Psychology, University of Toronto
Message-ID: <1992Mar23.184652.26102@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1992 18:46:52 GMT

I thought this might be of interest to Chinese Room participants.
In "An overview of the frame problem", John Haugeland recounts
the following story (taken from a memorandum by Warren Weaver
written in the 1940s).

During WWII, "a meesage encoded from Turkish was successfully decoded back into
Turkish (using statistical techniques) by someone who *knew no Turkish*. (In
fact, the decoder didn't recognize the result as a message, and believed
he had failed). Weaver goes on to suggest that translation [of natural
languages] might be regarded as a *species of decoding*..." (pp. 77-78)

Needless to say, Haugeland finds this idea well-nigh (though not quite
entirely) prepsotrous.

The article is published in Plylyshyn's _The Robot's Dilemma_

The original memorandum is reprinted in "Locke & Booth, 1955", but
no full reference is given by Haugeland.
-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
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