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Article 1572 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: blenko-tom@CS.YALE.EDU (Tom Blenko)
Subject: Re: Searle (was Re: Daniel Dennett (was Re: Comme
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Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1991 09:04:49 GMT
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In article <JMC.91Nov24234315@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
|In article <1991Nov25.065311.25395@cs.yale.edu> blenko-tom@CS.YALE.EDU (Tom Blenko) writes:
|   In article <1991Nov25.023006.27696@cs.rochester.edu> steyn@cs.rochester.edu (Gavin Steyn) writes:
|   |...
|   |  Actually, to tell the truth, I fall somewhere into the camp who believes
|   |Searle's whole argument is irrelevant--if I ever invented a system that acted
|   |like it understood Chinese, I really wouldn't give a damn whether or not it
|   |*actually* understood Chinese (whatever actually understanding Chinese may
|   |mean); I'd just use it for whatever purpose I'd designed it for.
|
|   And if it is nonsensical to propose inventing such a system, or to
|   propose it using a particular approach, wouldn't you prefer to know why
|   now rather than later?

|Searle does not deny the possibility of any particular empirical
|performance.  He just denies that it would count as the computer
|program thinking.  It is evidently Tom Blenko who doesn't understand
|Searle when he suggests that Searle is denying any hope of making
|a system that behaves as if it understood Chinese.

I didn't say that he did (as it would be obviously silly: Searle
himself offers the Chinese Room as an example of such).

Like Steyn, I think that one working system is more persuasive than
1000 philosophical arguments about why a putative system would or would
not be termed "intelligent".  However, working artificial systems do
not exist (to the best of my knowledge).  What I am suggesting is that
Searle's arguments illustrate why current approaches have failed so
miserably.  The interesting part is not that he "just denies" that
programs think (of course they don't), but the conditions (under the
broad heading of intensionality) that he argues are necessary for a
system (hardware, software, wetware, or other) to "think".

Finally, I think Steyn is hasty in concluding that "Searle's whole
argument is irrelevant" when he hasn't read or understood Searle.

	Tom


