From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael Mon Mar  9 18:35:09 EST 1992
Article 4257 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael
>From: michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <1992Mar2.190455.17079@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1992Mar2.214012.22715@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Mar4.143142.12977@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>
Message-ID: <1992Mar4.205355.26542@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1992 20:53:55 GMT

In article <1992Mar4.143142.12977@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>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.

I fail to see at all what this has to do with the original discussion, as 
we were talking about *explicit* understanding, and *inherent* meaning
of symbols.

- michael





