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Article 4250 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Mar4.190304.16485@beaver.cs.washington.edu>
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Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
References: <1992Mar3.201743.20894@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Mar3.220206.6241@beaver.cs.washington.edu> <1992Mar4.172020.19505@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Wed, 4 Mar 92 19:03:04 GMT
Lines: 36

In article <1992Mar4.172020.19505@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>In article <1992Mar3.220206.6241@beaver.cs.washington.edu> pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis) writes:
>>
>>If the person engaged in the above activity were to spend several
>>years watching their own responses to the queries, what makes you so
>>certain that they would not then understand at least some of the
>>symbols ? 
>>
>How could the length of time that a person suffles around meaningless
>symbols possibly affect the meaning that they have? Charlie Chaplin,
>in _Modern Times_ has a job in which he, in effect, "pushes around" the
>same symbols with mind-numbing regularity.  Do these come to "mean"
>something over time?  
>
>Even if (and I suspect this is what you have in
>mind) 

Absolutely.
       
       the person could come to abduce some sort of hypotheses about
>the meaning of the symbols, this avenue is not open to the AI side
>of the debate, because under strong AI, [ ... ]

Chris, as you yourself not below, hardly anyone in the AI field is
into what Searle called "strong AI" anymore. It is simply incredibly
deceitful to imply that the entire AI community believes the tenets of
strong AI, when for a start, most of the connectionist community is
clearly closer to Searle's weak AI.

You're attacking a strawman, or at least, a minority view.

-- paul

-- 
Computer Science Laboratory	  "truth is out of style" - MC 900ft Jesus
University of Washington 		<pauld@cs.washington.edu>


