From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!wupost!uunet!ogicse!reed!zeke Mon Mar  9 18:33:09 EST 1992
Article 4069 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeke@reed.edu (Zeke Koch)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Feb27.083159.1102@reed.edu>
Date: 27 Feb 92 08:31:59 GMT
Article-I.D.: reed.1992Feb27.083159.1102
References: <1992Feb26.165452.7666@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Feb26.190407.5123@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1992Feb27.025740.8034@a.cs.okstate.edu>
Organization: Reed College, Portland, OR
Lines: 33

In article <1992Feb27.025740.8034@a.cs.okstate.edu> onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR) writes:
>In article <1992Feb26.190407.5123@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>>
>  Either I have missed something entirely, or there is something severly
>lacking in this entire discussion of the Chinese Room understanding
>Chinese.  The argumentation has been one sided thus far as it seems
>to hold the following:
>
>  1.) Any system which can take in inputs and produce properly corresponding
>  outputs is considered a chinese-speaking system.
>
>  2.) The system actually "understands" chinese because the real chinese
>  speaker "understands" the outputs.  (Also, this already brings about
>  some implicit difference between the system and the real chinese speaker).
>
>I would suggest that unless the system can translate the language from
>its original tongue to that of chinese or be capable of generating its
>own originial statements free of context from the ones being presented
>to it, the system has altogether failed to understand anything at all.
>

I fail to understand why this step is necessary, can we translate from our
neuronal firings to English?  

>
>BCnya,
>  Charles O. Onstott, III

Zeke Koch
-- 
				zeke@reed.edu
"Listen UP! NeXT has made it possible for Tiny Tim to over-extend himself and
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