From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aiai!jeff Wed Feb 26 12:54:09 EST 1992
Article 3976 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
Message-ID: <6254@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 24 Feb 92 19:05:24 GMT
References: <1992Feb22.181122.12088@oracorp.com>
Sender: news@aiai.ed.ac.uk
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
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In article <1992Feb22.181122.12088@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com writes:
>Christopher Green writes:
>
>>>> When Steven Harnad came to the University of Toronto to give a
>>>> colloquium on *his* solution to the Chinese Room, he noted, "Everyone
>>>> thinks that defining understanding is so difficult.  Well, here..." at
>>>> which point he spouted something entirely incomprehensible in a
>>>> non-English language.  "There," he said, "that was Hungarian.  Did you
>>>> understand that?  If not, then you know what understanding
>>>> involves..."
>
>> The question is "Does the Chinese room understand *Chinese*?" Insofar
>> as I understand, this is the ONLY question relevant to the Chinese
>> room. It is the aritificial intelligentsia who have tried to make the
>> question obscure.  Searle's question was very straightforward, and
>> Harnad's explication is dead on.
>
>Well, I disagree on almost every point. I don't think Searle's
>question was straightforward, I don't think Harnad's explication
>helped at all, and I don't think AI types are trying to make the word
>"understanding" obscure; quite the opposite.

Some AI types are claiming that "understand" as used in Searle's
arguments needs to be defined, explained, etc before they will take
it seriously.  If they don't think there's something obscure about it,
why don't they just tell us what it means and save a lot of time and
net bandwidth.

Instead, whenever someone like Harnad tries to explain it, they
accuse them of indulging in debating tricks.

Indeed, if Harnad's explanation didn't help at all, why not?
What is this notion of understanding that you think is relevant
and that he failed to explain?  That, at least, is pretty obscure
to me.

-- jd


