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Article 4007 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: orourke@unix1.cs.umass.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <43909@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 25 Feb 92 13:46:34 GMT
References: <43686@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Feb21.012616.9016@husc3.harvard.edu> <43846@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Feb24.223405.28054@psych.toronto.edu>
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In article <1992Feb24.223405.28054@psych.toronto.edu> 
	christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:

[re Hofstadter's claim that the memorizer is not the system]
>Once the man has memorized the rules and
>symbols, the system is part of him, not the other way around.  

	Yes, this is a good point, one made by Searle himself.
But it still seems possible to me that the Chinese-understander
subsystem of the memorizer understands Chinese, while the memorizer
does not.  That the system is part of the man, does not imply that
asking the man if he understands Chinese is the same as asking
the system if it understands Chinese.  If you ask the system
(in Chinese) presumably it would say (in Chinese), "Of course I 
understand Chinese!"  And you would be in the same position as
one who confronts a clearly competent Chinese-speaking frog.


