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Article 1236 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: clarke@next1 (Thomas Clarke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Chinese Room Variant
Keywords: ai philosophy searle expert system
Message-ID: <1991Nov7.151439.3353@osceola.cs.ucf.edu>
Date: 7 Nov 91 15:14:39 GMT
Sender: news@osceola.cs.ucf.edu (News sysetm)
Organization: University of Central Florida
Lines: 36

While contemplating the application of expert system tecnhiques to education, I
was led to the following variation of the "Chinese Room."  Frankly, while I  
find Searle's version unconvincing, I have a hard time shaking this one - 
perhaps because of its mathematical flavor.

A child is taught an abstract system of computation with two operations @ and &  
on the set of all finite strings formed from the set {A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J}.

The results of operations on singleton strings are defined by tables:

   & -table                  @ - table

    A  B  C  D ...								    A  B  C  D  E
    ___________              ______________
A  | A  B  C  D ...     A   | A  A  A  A  A ...
B  | B  C  D  E ...     B   | A  B  C  D  E ...
C  | C  D  E  F ...     C   | A  C  E  G  I ...
D  | D  E  F  G ...     D   | A  D  G  J BC ...
    ...                      ...
        (By now you know that the system is decimal arithmetic).

The child is also taught the rules for forming @ and & of longer strings in  
terms of the tables for singleton strings.

After much tutelage by an expert system, the child is able to perform & and @  
for arbitrary pairs of strings with nearly flawless accuracy.

My question is:  Does the child understand the concept of number? arithmetic?  

I would say not; it seems to me there is more to number than computational
manipulations.

POLY   Thomas Clarke                             MATH
O  L   Institute for Simulation and Training     A  T
L  O   University of Central Florida             T  A
YLOP   clarke@acme.ucf.edu                       HTAM


