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Article 1563 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle (was Re: Daniel Dennett (was Re: Comme
Message-ID: <JMC.91Nov24195716@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 25 Nov 91 00:57:16 GMT
References: <YAMAUCHI.91Nov24022756@magenta.cs.rochester.edu>
	<MATT.91Nov24000158@physics.berkeley.edu> <94066@brunix.UUCP>
	<1991Nov24.201501.5845@husc3.harvard.edu>
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In-Reply-To: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu's message of 25 Nov 91 01:15:00 GMT

In article <1991Nov24.201501.5845@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

   In article <94066@brunix.UUCP> 
   cgy@cs.brown.edu (Curtis Yarvin) writes:

   >Unless I am terribly confused about Searle's point in the "Chinese room"
   >argument, it stems from a simplistic confusion of software and hardware. 

   Not only are you terribly confused about Searle's point; not having
   bothered to read his article, you are terribly ignorant to argue about it.
   In "Minds, Brains, and Programs" Searle explicitly says: "let the
   individual internalise all of these elements of the system. [...]  All the
   same, he understands nothing of the Chinese, and *a fortiori* neither does
   the system, because there isn't anything in the system that isn't in him."
   (See the Boden anthology, p.73.)

Yes, this the crux of the matter where Searle and Zeleny are confused
and Yarvin isn't.  It is ordinarily customary to use the same name for
the body of a person and the personality.  As long as there is a
unique personality associated with the body it does no harm.  In the
case of multiple personalities (assuming such really exist) or in the
case of time-sharing computer systems or systems doing interpretation
(which certainly exist), the distinction must be made.  Different
personalities and different programs have different *intentional*
properties.

In Searle's hypothetical case, the man's ordinary personality is
interpreting a description the hypothetical Chinese personality that
has different knowledge from the man's ordinary personality.  There
should be no difficulty in understanding this.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.


