From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!christo Wed Feb 26 12:54:33 EST 1992
Article 4011 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
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>From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Feb25.184610.5199@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <43846@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Feb24.223405.28054@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Feb25.011840.24663@beaver.cs.washington.edu>
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1992 18:46:10 GMT

In article <1992Feb25.011840.24663@beaver.cs.washington.edu> pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis) writes:
>In article <1992Feb24.223405.28054@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>>
>
>This shows that you don't fully grasp the Systems Reply. When you
>address the question "do you understand chinese" to the man who has
>learnt the rules, what are you addressing ? You claim that the system
>is a part of him, but in what way ? 

More obscuratism from the artificial intelligentisa. In the very simple and
obvious sense that there is no system at all apart from the activity of
his own mind.
 
If you really want your argument to rely wholly on the very dubious 
assumption that there are, somehow, two minds running around inside
the man's head, feel free, but the utter tendentiousness of the claim
is patently obvious to everyone not committed a priori to the belief
that computers JUST GOTTA have minds.  In short, its nothing short of
an ad hoc shoring up of a failing research program strictly in
the sense outline by Lakatos a quarter-century ago. It has all the
symptoms: the claim has no empirical consequences whatsoever, and it
complicates matters to no end apart from salvaging a flagging hypothesis.


-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
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