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Article 1583 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: blenko-tom@CS.YALE.EDU (Tom Blenko)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle (was Re: Daniel Dennett (was Re: Comme
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Date: 25 Nov 91 19:37:29 GMT
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In article <> steyn@cs.rochester.edu (Gavin Steyn) writes:
|In article <> blenko-tom@CS.YALE.EDU (Tom Blenko) writes:
|
|>Yeah, all you need to do is make a case for rules embodying
|>understanding (I can imagine a case for rocks embodying understanding,
|>but rules are a much tougher proposition).
|
|OK.  How about this:
|  For any sentence I feed into the rules+person system, the system can
|respond with something I would consider intelligent.  (This is assumed
|in Searle's article).  Since any other object that can do the same (i.e.
|a Chinese person) is considered to have understanding, I would consider
|the system to have understanding.  

You can redefine "understanding" to mean whatever you want, I suppose,
but that's not likely to be very interesting to anyone else.

I think you're going to find it very difficult that show that a rule
(e.g., a rule of arithmetic) has a necessary and intrinsic relationship
to anything at all in the physical world.  And if the rule isn't
"about" some phenomenon in that sense, it doesn't represent any
understanding of that phenonmenon, even if it happens to describe it
quite accurately.

|>Searle provides abundant support for his position (although you
|>apparently have not read it).
|
|Actually, you have obviously not read the paper--see below.

You are apparently so innocent that you fail to realize that the
"abundant support" I referred to is not in Searle's paper, but is to be
found in two of his books, one of which is written as a successor to
the BBS articles.

With regard to arguments for impossibility or improbablity of certain
approaches, see earlier reply to JMC (you have misunderstood my
comments, probably both because they were too cryptic and because you
are inadequately prepared).

	Tom


