Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,alt.consciousness,comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.meta,rec.arts.books
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!EU.net!sun4nl!ktibv!rdb
From: rdb@ktibv.uucp (The Graphical Gnome)
Subject: Re: Penrose and Searle (was Re: Roger Penrose's fixed ideas) 
Message-ID: <1994Nov29.083947.13679@ktibv.uucp>
Organization: KTI BV
References: <39ofgk$7rb@news-rocq.inria.fr> <39oqc8$9gb@news-rocq.inria.fr><39posv$mr0@nnrp.ucs.ubc.ca> <CzFr3J.990@cogsci.ed.ac.uk <JMC.94Nov22011226@white.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il>  <Pine.SOL.3.91.941127203450.17784E-100000@math>
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 1994 08:39:47 GMT
Lines: 29
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.skeptic:96581 comp.ai.philosophy:22805 sci.philosophy.meta:15102

Gene Ward Smith <gsmith@math> writes:

>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.

I always wondered whether an itelligent person like you and me KNOW
what we are doing or just pretending. If the difference between blind
algorithme and knowing is gone (like in the chinese room), you get
into the nice discussion about whether (not distingusable) == (same).

For me it is.  

>--
>     Gene Ward Smith/Brahms Gang/University of Toledo
>                 gsmith@math.utoledo.edu

-- 

    R.E. den Braasem 
    aka The Graphical Gnome (rdb@ktibv.nl) 
