From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!pindor Mon Mar  9 18:35:00 EST 1992
Article 4241 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Mar4.143142.12977@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCS Public Access
References: <44140@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Mar2.172515.15389@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Mar2.190455.17079@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1992Mar2.214012.22715@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1992 14:31:42 GMT

In article <1992Mar2.214012.22715@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>In article <1992Mar2.190455.17079@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>
>> It is not difficult to take a reasonably bright 10 year old, and teach him
>>the manipulations of the Euclidean algorithm for computing greatest common
>>divisors.  And you can do so as a purely mechanical operation.  If asked,
>>he would answer that he knows nothing about greatest common divisors or
>>how to compute them.  Yet clearly the system does.
>
>Nonsense.  This "system" *understands* nothing.  It is merely a formal
>syntactic system.  Just like the child, it has *nothing* in it that
>refers to "greatest common divisors" and the like.
>
[example about potential energy calculations deleted]
>
>BTW, this is a good example of how interpretation can play a large role
>in the attribution of "understanding" to a program.  If an electronics
>engineer had a program he used to calculate the PE of a capacitor, he or she
>would probably say that the program *actually did calculate electrostatic 
>energy*.  But it doesn't.  It merely submits the inputs to certain syntactic
>rules, and provides outputs.  The *exact same program* could be used to
>calculate the potential energy in a spring system.  The program itself
>does not *refer* to capacitors - it doesn't "refer" to anything.  It is
>only our *interpretation* of the inputs and outputs which give meaning.
>
Things are not always as simple as you make them to appear. Consider some
autistic people who, while appearing rather uninteligent, can nevertheless
perform amazing arithmetic calculations in their heads. They are unable to
explain how they do it, but no one has taught them how to do these very long
multiplications, divisions etc. So, although consciously not aware of how they
are doing it, they must have some subconscious understanding of aritnmethic.

>- michael
>
>


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


