Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Books on philosophy of AI
Message-ID: <jqbD3LruB.6zx@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <3gl39k$1op@odin.diku.dk> <D3DLF2.34L@news.cern.ch> <D3L5vH.H8B@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 23:56:34 GMT
Lines: 27

In article <D3L5vH.H8B@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <D3DLF2.34L@news.cern.ch> hallam@dxal18.cern.ch writes:
>
>>Just don't spend too long getting wound up by Searle's chinese room :-)
>>I think the true interest of the problem is not how to squish it but how
>>to squish it in a novel way without writing a paper the length of a novel.
>>Its a pretty silly argument and he employs circular reasoning in a very
>>annoying fashion "If I don't understand chinese does it make sense to say
>>that myself plus a few bits of paper can understand it?". The bits of paper
>>being precisely the computer program which he is fighting against. Huh!
>
>So what's the circularity?

This seems to me very close to asking of "p -> q; q -> p; therefore q",
"So what's the circularity?"  How does one respond?  By defining a circularity?
By explaining the rules of logic?

In answer to Searle's question, we can answer that perhaps it does make sense
unless we simply assume without argument that bits of paper (i.e., computer
programs; if for some reason you don't accept this equivalence, then you should
be asking about it, not circularity) cannot understand Chinese.  Of course,
that assumption is precisely what Searle is claiming to show.  It is hard to
get more circular than that.
-- 
<J Q B>

