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From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Subject: Re: Penrose and Searle (was Re: Roger Penrose's fixed ideas)
References: <39posv$mr0@nnrp.ucs.ubc.ca> <CzFr3J.990@cogsci.ed.ac.uk <JMC.94Nov22011226@white.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il>
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Date: Fri, 25 Nov 1994 18:28:24 GMT
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In article <JMC.94Nov22011226@white.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il> jmc@white.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il (McCarthy John) writes:

>Imagine that the procedure that the man in the Chinese room were performing
>unbeknownst to him were simulating an abacus rather than translating Chinese.
>Would the Searle argument then prove that a machine can't do arithmetic?

Yes. The interesting point is that we are (nearly all of us) happy to
extend the meaing of "add" to include what calculators do, but not (so
many of us) to extend "understanding" to computers which get the
behaviour right. This is partly just an accident of language, like the
accident that makes us happy to accept that areoplanes can really fly,
but equally certain that submarines do not swim, but there is more to
it. "Adding" is a low level menial activity that we are quite happy to
consign to serfs such as clerks and calculators. On the other hand,
"understanding" is something we all feel rather proud of, one of our
unique distinguishing characteristics, so we are more defensive about
it.

In principle you are quite right. The Chinese Room argument implies
that calculators do not add numbers, they merely go through an
abstract formal process syntactically equivalent to addition, and
which we can therefore usefully interpret as addition. But it lacks
the essential human ingredients of addition, the furrowed brow, the
upcast eyes, the numbers swirling in a mental fog....

Fortunately.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
"The mind reigns, but does not govern" -- Paul Valery
