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From: Gene Ward Smith <gsmith@math>
Subject: Re: Penrose and Searle (was Re: Roger Penrose's fixed ideas) 
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On Mon, 21 Nov 1994, McCarthy John wrote:

> Imagine that the procedure that the man in the Chinese room were performing
> unbeknownst to him were simulating an abacus rather than translating Chinese.
> Would the Searle argument then prove that a machine can't do arithmetic?

The ones we have now can't.  If you mapped the input and output bits
around, it would happily tell you all the wrong things about what 1+1 is. 
It only becomes a statement about arithmetic when it reaches us, because
you AI guys have not yet produced a machine which understands what the
hell it is doing.
--
     Gene Ward Smith/Brahms Gang/University of Toledo
                 gsmith@math.utoledo.edu

