From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!access.usask.ca!kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca!unixg.ubc.ca!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!news.bbn.com!usc!wupost!sdd.hp.com Wed Feb 26 12:54:42 EST 1992
Article 4027 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!access.usask.ca!kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca!unixg.ubc.ca!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!news.bbn.com!usc!wupost!sdd.hp.com
!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!ncar!noao!amethyst!organpipe.uug.arizona.edu!NSMA.AriZonA.EdU!bill
>From: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Feb26.021000.29992@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
Date: 26 Feb 92 02:10:00 GMT
References: <43846@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Feb24.223405.28054@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Feb25.011840.24663@beaver.cs.washington.edu> <1992Feb25.184610.5199@psych.toronto.edu>
Sender: news@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu
Reply-To: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Organization: Center for Neural Systems, Memory, and Aging
Lines: 34

In article <1992Feb25.184610.5199@psych.toronto.edu> 
christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
> 
>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.  [ . . . ]

  There is a kind of psychological disorder called
Multiple Personality Syndrome, whose victims express,
at different times, two or more very distinctive
personalities.  These personalities will typically
claim to know different things and have different
capabilities.  Think of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for an
example of the sort of thing I'm talking about.  Suppose
we find somebody with MPS in whom one of the personalities
speaks Chinese and the other does not -- let's say Jekyll
does and Hyde does not.  If we ask this victim, when
he is expressing the Hyde persona, whether he speaks
Chinese, he will say he does not.  Is he lying?  Or is
he simply wrong?  If you're not willing to grant that
there are actually two minds in one head, you have to
say that he is wrong, don't you?

  When the man in Searle's experiment (who has internalized
the Chinese room) is asked whether he speaks Chinese, he
says he does not.  Could it be that he is simply, in the
same sense as Hyde, wrong?

	-- Bill

(P.S. My own view is that it makes perfect sense to think
of two minds running around inside the man's head.)  


