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Article 4722 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: memorization reply
Message-ID: <1992Mar25.174850.29763@spss.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1992 17:48:50 GMT
References: <6388@skye.ed.ac.uk> <centaur.700370638@cc.gatech.edu> <6516@skye.ed.ac.uk>
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In article <6516@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes
(quoting Anthony G. Francis):
>>           Before, the man was a simple interpreter operating on
>>the program external to himself, like a chip running a program in
>>secondary memory. In the Memorization reply, the man acts as if he was
>>a chip running a process within its own memory. _There is no difference_.
>
>Why do you think this is a point _against_ Searle?  Searle thinks that
>if he can show there's no understanding in one case, he's also shown
>it for another.  And if the cases are equivalent (no difference), then
>he's right.

Au contraire.  The systems reply states that Searle is *wrong* in the
initial statement of the CR: he's shown that the man (the CPU) does not
understand, but not that the system (the computer-plus-program) does not
understand.  If the cases (before and after the memorization reply)
are equivalent, then Searle continues to be wrong and not to have shown
that the system does not understand.


