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Article 2031 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: orourke@unix1.cs.umass.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle, again
Message-ID: <40453@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 11 Dec 91 02:39:02 GMT
References: <2127@ucl-cs.uucp> <91338.113617KELLYDK@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> <5796@skye.ed.ac.uk> <40346@dime.cs.umass.edu> <5831@skye.ed.ac.uk>
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Reply-To: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
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[Re: interpreting the Chinese Room symbol manipulations as moves 
in a chess game] Jeff Dalton writes:

>On the other hand, looked at from the other side, what if someone
>found a way to encode chess moves as Chinese and "hacked" the rules
>used in the Chinese Room?  

	I still don't see how this is possible, but perhaps it is
a failure of my hacking imagination.  Let me return to Searle's
claim and explain why I can't see it.  He says:

	"But imagine that ... I get bored with just shuffling
	the -- to me -- meaningless symbols.  So suppose I decide
	to interpret the symbols as standing for moves in a chess
	game.  Which semantics is the system giving off now?"
				--Searle (p. 31, SciAm Jan 90)

The claim I can't see is why it is even possible "to interpret the
symbols as standing for moves in a chess game."  This is apparently
so obvious to him that he doesn't bother to support it.  If anyone
can enlighten me I would appreciate it.
	There is a single syntax:  symbols and their manipulation,
let's say bits and bit movements to be specific.  There are two
semantics: the manipulations of a natural language (Chinese)
understanding system, and moves in a chess game.  Call these NL & CHESS.
I assume an interpretation is fixed wrt time:  the symbols cannot
map to different objects at different times. 
	There is a NL interpretation: a mapping of the symbols to
various language constructs so that the manipulations make sense for
a language understanding system.  Now suppose that Searle is right:
there is in addition a CHESS interpretation: a mapping of the symbols
to chess pieces and chess square designations so that the manipulations
correspond to moves in a chess game.  Some symbols must map under CHESS
to e.g. "white knight," which I will abbreviate N.  These same symbols
must map to something fixed under the NL interpretation; perhaps they
map to a single natural language concept, say "transitive verb"; or
perhaps the parsing is less fortuitous, and that symbols that map to N
under CHESS map to several objects, or part of an object, under NL.
Regardless, the mapping is fixed.
	So now for the CHESS mapping to be truly a mapping to legal
chess moves, we have to believe that the manipulations of the symbols
that map to N by CHESS, are *structurally isomorphic* to the manipulations
of those same symbols by NL, which might map them to "transitive verb."
This is what I find unbelievable:  that there could be such a coincidental
structural similarity between knight moves and verb manipulations. The
two semantic domains are just not that similar.
	What am I missing?


