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Article 4064 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: smoliar@hilbert.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Feb26.102122.22893@nuscc.nus.sg>
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Reply-To: smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar)
Organization: Institute of Systems Science, NUS, Singapore
References: <1992Feb22.181122.12088@oracorp.com> <6254@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1992 10:21:22 GMT
Lines: 35

In article <6254@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) 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..."
>>
>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.
>
Well I think we can begin by questioning whether or not Harnad provided an
explanation.  He provided a situation.  He uttered some Hungarian (supposedly),
asked his audience if they understood, and claimed that they then knew "what
understanding involves."  The situation was an instance of a verbal
transaction.  My first question is whether or not one can generalize
from a single instance.  (There is that old saw about one not being
a statistic.)  My second question is, assuming that one CAN generalize,
can one generalize to the concept of "understanding."  I would argue that
our use of the word is far too rich and context-dependent to assume that
Harnad's situation is, in any way, prototypical of the way in which the
word is used.  At best it serves as a model for other situations (such
as being confronted with a text in rot-13) where we can say the same lack
of understanding is taking place;  but this is a far cry from assuming that,
on the basis of that one model, one knows "what understanding involves."
-- 
Stephen W. Smoliar; Institute of Systems Science
National University of Singapore; Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Kent Ridge, SINGAPORE 0511
Internet:  smoliar@iss.nus.sg


