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Article 4114 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <457@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 27 Feb 92 19:58:21 GMT
References: <1992Feb25.011840.24663@beaver.cs.washington.edu> <1992Feb25.184610.5199@psych.toronto.edu> <43956@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Feb26.170232.8676@psych.toronto.edu> <CHANDRA.92Feb26131732@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
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In article <CHANDRA.92Feb26131732@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu> chandra@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran) writes:
|
|ii. Given sentences in L, I can have in my awareness, if I choose,
|additional sentences *in L*, which are in some sense consequences of
|understanding the given sentences in L.  That is, I can think in L,
|similar to my ability to think in M.  The CR experiment in my view
|*does not satisfy* this sense of understanding a language.  The man in
|the room only "thinks in English". He can't think in L in the sense of
|going from a sentence in L to another sentence in L, unmediated by
|sentences in M.  

Yes, but does *the* *room* think in Chinese?  Who knows?  Nowhere near
enough information is given about the implementation of the CR to tell.
I can think of many reasonable implementation strategies that would result
in the room doing something akin to thinking in Chinese.  What rules them
out here?  Or what makes the thinking being done by the room any less
significant than that being done by the man running it?
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)



