From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!christo Mon Mar  9 18:34:29 EST 1992
Article 4192 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Mar2.172515.15389@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <1992Feb28.211025.26278@oracorp.com> <1992Feb29.162020.9271@psych.toronto.edu> <44140@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1992 17:25:15 GMT

In article <44140@dime.cs.umass.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>
>	I may have missed it in the multiple postings, but I don't
>recall you presenting an argument countering Hofstadter's point that
>the system is not the memorizer; I mean an argument more sophisticated
>than that the system is part of the memorizer. 

Okay, let's begin again in a moderate tone.

The man in the Room (consciously) memorizes all of the rules and the
shapes of all the symbols.  Then he (consciously) implements those
rules in attempting to construct Chinese answers to the Chinese questions
he receives.  In doing this, he satisfies the requirements of being
a Turing machine.  Becasue his answers are indistinguishible from those
that would be given by a native Chinese speaker, he also passes the Turing
test. We are now, under the TT, expected to say that he understands
Chinese.  If you ask him, however, he says he doesn't understand
Chinese but, rather, that he's just executing these rules about
symbol manipulation. To put the point bluntly, the Chinese symbols
have no reference for him, though his English symbols do. Everything
so far has been conscious and above board. At this point, Hofstadter
and Dennett, or at least the charicatures of them that have been
inhabiting this discussion of late, want to claim that he understands
Chinese, only unconsciously? Why suddenly unconsious? For no reason
at all except that such understanding, if it exists at all, is patently 
not in the man's consciousness. There are no other motivations or
implications of this move at all. I see no way of interpreting this move
other than as a patently ad hoc attempt to shore up a flagging hypothesis.
It corresponds brilliantly with Lakatos' distinction between ad hoc
and auxilliary hypotheses.  Auxilliary hypotheses, though they complicate
the original theory, advance the research program by implying new empirical 
consequences to be tested. Ad hoc hypotheses complicate the original
position to no empirical profit other than shoring up a recently
disconfirmed hypothesis. If this is a "meta-argument" then so be it.
What it provides is a reasoned explanation of the puzzling move to
"unconsciousness" on the part of Searle's opponents.


-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
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