From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert Mon Mar  9 18:35:44 EST 1992
Article 4308 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert
>From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Mar6.150444.22289@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
References: <1992Mar2.172515.15389@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Mar2.190455.17079@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1992Mar2.214012.22715@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1992 15:04:44 GMT
Lines: 31

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.

  You do like to misconstrue what I say.

  I very carefully avoided any statement about "understanding" in that
paragraph you quote.  Yet you immediately accuse me of saying that the
system understands.

  My one and only point is that it is very common for people to perform
complex algorithms without having any understanding of the algorithm or
its implications.  Thus, if we assume that a human can perform the
CR algorithm, and if we assume that the CR algorithm does "understand", it
is a quite incredible leap to assume that the human would also automatically
understand Chinese.

-- 
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940


