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Article 1547 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: cgy@cs.brown.edu (Curtis Yarvin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle (was Re: Daniel Dennett (was Re: Commenting on the posting))
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Date: 24 Nov 91 19:07:43 GMT
References: <15015@castle.ed.ac.uk> <YAMAUCHI.91Nov24022756@magenta.cs.rochester.edu> <MATT.91Nov24000158@physics.berkeley.edu>
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In article <MATT.91Nov24000158@physics.berkeley.edu> matt@physics.berkeley.edu writes:
>
>Indeed.  Searle's argument sounds more limited at first than it really
>is.  The point of his "Chinese room" argument, for example, is that
>symbolic manipulation cannot be thinking.

Unless I am terribly confused about Searle's point in the "Chinese room"
argument, it stems from a simplistic confusion of software and hardware.  In
the Turing Test, the control human provides both software (the transfer
function from input senses to motor output that constitutes intelligence),
and the neural hardware which actually computes this function.  In Searle's
Chinese room, the human is only the hardware, and the instructions he
executes are the software.

Thus it is absurd to say that Searle's man in the Chinese room "understands"
Chinese.  It would be just as absurd to argue that the silicon chip (or
Marchant calculator, or hundreds of overworked grad students flicking abaci)
in a working AI was "intelligent."  In both cases, though, even if you have
some workable definition for "understanding," the question is irrelevant.

c


