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Article 4044 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Feb26.190407.5123@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
Date: 26 Feb 92 19:04:07 GMT
References: <1992Feb25.011840.24663@beaver.cs.washington.edu> <1992Feb25.184610.5199@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Feb26.021000.29992@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1992Feb26.165452.7666@psych.toronto.edu>
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Reply-To: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Organization: Center for Neural Systems, Memory, and Aging
Lines: 31

In article <1992Feb26.165452.7666@psych.toronto.edu> 
christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>
>You aren't seriously suggesting that [Multiple Personality Syndrome] 
>can be induced by the Chinese room, are you?

  Yes, of course I am.  Don't you realize that that's exactly
what the Systems response *is*?

  When, in the case of the internalized Chinese room, the
man is asked "Do you understand Chinese?" and answers "No",
there are logically three possibilities:

1) He is lying.
2) He is telling the truth, but he is wrong.
3) He is telling the truth, and he is right.

  By stipulation we can rule out (1).  I would like to suggest
that the difficulty in deciding between (2) and (3) arises
not from the word "understand" (in "Do you understand Chinese?")
but rather from the word "you".

  The question -- and there is no obviously correct answer to
it -- is whether, once the man has internalized the Chinese
speaking machinery, it should be counted as part of him.  If
so, then since part of him understands Chinese, *he* understands
Chinese, so he is wrong.  If not, he is right.  In either case
it still makes pefect sense to say that the Chinese-speaking
system understands Chinese.

	-- Bill


