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Article 1598 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Chinese Room, from a different perspective
Keywords: ai philosophy searle expert system
Message-ID: <5698@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 25 Nov 91 21:35:30 GMT
References: <1991Nov7.151439.3353@osceola.cs.ucf.edu> <1991Nov11.011527.28514@midway.uchicago.edu> <70105@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 16

In article <70105@nigel.ee.udel.edu> lintz@cis.udel.edu (Brian Lintz) writes:

>I always thought basically the same thing. Searle starts with the
>premise that the man doesn't know Chinese, and ends with the 
>conclusion that the man doesn't know Chinese. He assumed what he
>intended to prove. 

Sigh.  Your paraphrase of the argument is faulty.

Searle starts with the premise that the man doesn't know Chinese.
Then the man gets a bunch of rules that let him answer queries
in Chinese.  And the man still doesn't know Chinese.  Conclusion:
the rules didn't give the man the ability to understand Chinese.

The circularity you identify above is simply not there, though
perhaps some other circularity is.


