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Article 1814 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: A Behaviorist Approach to AI Philosophy
Message-ID: <5768@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 2 Dec 91 22:02:14 GMT
References: <AdBfkmC00WBME1JqUw@andrew.cmu.edu> <YAMAUCHI.91Nov30002306@magenta.cs.rochester.edu>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 28

In article <YAMAUCHI.91Nov30002306@magenta.cs.rochester.edu> yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>In article <AdBfkmC00WBME1JqUw@andrew.cmu.edu> Franklin Boyle <fb0m+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
>>Brian Yamauchi writes:
>
>>> True, but as many, many people have pointed out -- Searle isn't right.
>>> I still have yet to see a convincing rebuttal to the "Systems Reply".
>
>>Well, let me try the "Nonsense Room", which I briefly outlined at
>>the end of a previous posting.

>Now, either you can translate the responses of the Nonsense Room
>System into coherent and relevant replies or you can't.  If you can,
>then it's no longer speaking nonsense -- it's speaking the new
>language you've just invented.  If you can't, then the difference
>between it and the Chinese Room is clear.

Here's another difference.  The Chinese Room has the initials
CR while the Nonsense room has the initials NR.  The difference
between it and the Chinese Room is clear.

It's trivial to indetify a difference and assert that it's a
crucial difference.  But that doesn't mean it really is crucial.

Ask yourself this: how does the Chinese Room know it's not the
Nonsense Room?

(Hint: not because some people outside the room can translate
the responses, because the CR doesn't know they're doing that.)


