From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!pindor Mon Mar  9 18:34:30 EST 1992
Article 4193 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
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>From: pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Mar2.181615.23245@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCS Public Access
References: <1992Feb22.181122.12088@oracorp.com> <6254@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1992Feb24.231735.4404@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <6307@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1992 18:16:15 GMT

In article <6307@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>In article <1992Feb24.231735.4404@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>
>>                     Why is then incorrect to say that answering 
>>correctly the questions put to CR indicates that it understands a certain
>>meaning of the story, even if the person inside does not understand the exact
>>meaning of the words? Hanard's trick obscures totally the fact that the story
>>can be understood a different levels. A single word 'understand' does not 
>>distinguish between these different levels.
>>   There is a level at which the story can be understood without understanding
>>the words. Is this so difficult to understand (:-))?
>
>One thing that is hard to understand is why you think understanding
>in one sense answers a question about uynderstanding in another.

It looks like you misunderstood (:-() what I was trying to say. I am trying to
say that there are different senses in which we use the word 'understanding'
(you seem to agree on this, right?) and, in some sense of the word' a story
is understood by CR even though it does not understand the literal meaning of 
the words 'hamburger' etc. This understanding does not answer questions about
understanding in another sense. On the contrary, I`ve presented few examples
showing that in some situations these different understandings might be 
uncoupled. I've also argued that this decoupling may easily happen in non-
standard situations (i.e. when the term is applied to something else than normal
human beings) and that expecting CR to have 'understanding' in all aspects
is unrealistic. However, claiming as Searle does, that it has 'zero 
understanding' is an emotional stance.

-- 
Andrzej Pindor
University of Toronto
Computing Services
pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca


