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Article 2070 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: kohout@cs.umd.edu (Robert Kohout)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle and the Chinese Room
Message-ID: <44801@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 12 Dec 91 19:28:38 GMT
References: <gdCb=YW00UhWQ2lpNp@andrew.cmu.edu> <YAMAUCHI.91Dec5040116@heron.cs.rochester.edu> <1991Dec5.191043.10565@psych.toronto.edu>
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In article <1991Dec5.191043.10565@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>
>The strength of Searle's arugment is that, contrary to what some may claim,
>it does not rest on any particular way of telling the Chinese Room story.  The
>argument simply is that it is impossible to generate semantics from a purely
>syntactic system.  This, Searle argues, is a *logical* point, true simply in
>virtue of what the words "syntax" and "semantics" mean.  
>
I stop reading for a few weeks, and suddenly we're back to this CR
discussion again. Oh well....

It seems to me that this so-called "logical" aspect to Searle's position
is flawed. That is, the meanings of the words "syntax" and "semantics"
are conflated. No one has ever shown, for example, that the semantic
representations of the human mind are NOT produced by mechanisms which
can be accurately modeled on a digital machine. What proof is there that
what these philosophers call semantic is in fact "super-syntactic"?
Is this not merely an appeal to intuitions which give far too much 
credit to semantics and far too little to syntax? That is, isn't
it an appeal to the human prejudice that we _must_ be more than
a mere machine.

I fully realize that syntactic manipulations have limitations, and
I do *not* propose that they are sufficient to capture the essense
of intelligence. However, I am unconvinced by what I consider to
be little more than sophistry, and I particularly object to the
notion that these arguments are somehow logical. They are not. They
gain most, if not all, of their weight from our inability to clearly
and unambiguously differentiate syntax and semantics.

>
>It seems to me that, unless strong AI proponents can provide a coherent
>explanation of why Searle's logical argument fails, the field as a whole
>rests on a profound misunderstanding.
>

Why do people insist upon putting the entire burden of the philosophy
of mind upon a group of people who should be more properly be classified
as engineers than philosphers? Personally, I fail to see how the
Chinese Room argument impinges upon AI practioners in any way whatsoever.
If I can build the room, I really don't care whether or not you are
going to say that it (or the computer which implements it) REALLY
understands. That is useless hairsplitting, as far as I'm concerned.


