From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael Mon Dec 16 11:00:59 EST 1991
Article 2025 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael
>From: michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar)
Subject: Re: Searle, again
Message-ID: <1991Dec10.214912.19256@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <2151@ucl-cs.uucp> <1991Dec9.214656.4803@unixg.ubc.ca>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1991 21:49:12 GMT

In article <1991Dec9.214656.4803@unixg.ubc.ca> mcke@unixg.ubc.ca (William McKellin) writes:

[WRT to the Chinese Room...]

>     How is the attribution process towards birds and machines
>different from each individual's attribution of understanding,
>interpretation, intelligence and personhood to other humans?  
>     Searle plays on our culture's commonsense, notions and
>frameworks of belief surrounding "agency", "animate" and
>"inanimate" , "understanding" and "interpretation".

You misunderstand the point Searle is making in the Chinese Room.  Searle is
quite willing to grant that we attribute intelligence and understanding to
*others* on the basis of behaviour.  But Searle explicitly states that he is
not interested in the "Other Minds" problem.  The Chines Room demonstrates that
syntactic manipulation is not sufficient to produce understanding *in YOU*.
We may indeed always attribute subjective states on the basis of behaviour.
But only someone who is anaesthetized, in the grip of behaviourism, or dishonest
would deny that such states exist.

The question is not how do we *attribute* understanding in *others*, but
how is it produced *in us*.  Searle's point is that, even though we may
produce behaviour that is *interpretable* as intelligent, it doesn't
necessarily follow that we possess understanding.  

- michael
 



