From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael Tue May 12 15:50:06 EDT 1992
Article 5523 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael
>From: michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar)
Subject: Re: Chinese Room
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <841@kepler1.rentec.com> <1992May9.202558.2728@otago.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <1992May10.003950.19547@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Sun, 10 May 1992 00:39:50 GMT

In article <1992May9.202558.2728@otago.ac.nz> barryp@otago.ac.nz writes:
>In article <841@kepler1.rentec.com>, fcaggian@rentec.com (Frank Caggiano) writes:
>> Can anyone tell me if the chinese room has ever been attempted
>> using humans and what the results were?  Is it even possible?
>> 
>It is certainly possible to write a book to run the Chinese room but the
>practical difficulties are immense.  First the person would have to decode the
>Chinese character (it takes Chinese speakers minutes to look up a character in
>a dictionary, so how long would it take someone who has no knowlwedge of them).
>Second they would have to have rules for what to do with them to make
>intelligible replies.  (The easiest set of rules to apply would parse the 
>inputs, translate them into outputs but this would imply understanding)

Uh, yes, it *would* imply understanding, which is the whole point.  Granted
that Searle assumes the possibility of creating these rules, to say that
the "practical difficulties are immense" seems to understate things.  We have
*no idea* how to create a program to pass the Turing Test.

>In practice it would be impossible for a human to do this without some computer
>to help.

Why?  Sure, it might take a long time to get one response, but there is
no reason that a computer would need to be involved unless you want
real-time responses.  Demanding this is simply to miss the point of the
Chinese Room...

- michael




