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From: snodgras@cts.com (John E. Snodgrass)
Subject: Re: Penrose and Searle (was Re: Roger Penrose's fixed ideas)
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In article <Czu5zD.Dto@festival.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:

>consign to serfs such as clerks and calculators. On the other hand,
>"understanding" is something we all feel rather proud of, one of our
>unique distinguishing characteristics, so we are more defensive about
>it.

      The essence of the Chinese Room argument is that the Chinese room does 
not understand what it is doing from _its own_ viewpoint, not from the 
viewpoint of an outsider. What is meant by the term "understanding" and what 
is meant by the term "adding" or for that matter "throwing" or "waltzing" etc 
are fundamentally different concepts -- not because we feel less "proud" of 
one than another, but because of the self-referential nature of understanding 
as opposed to the essentially mechanical activity of the others.

      When we understand something, we are not simply performing a sequence of 
actions, but instead are recognizing a relationship between ourselves and the 
environment, between our goals and our actions. We do not learn (or 
understand) in a vacuum: we do so in a context of positive and negative 
results -- _from our own perspective_. The dominance of pleasure and pain in 
determining what we learn (no matter how indirect it may become) is a 
non-trivial difference between ourselves and machines. Our hardware (if you 
like) is constructed on the principle of maintaining integrity by recognizing 
threats to its own stability. 

      Right now you are not just performing a "reading" function. 
 When you have decided  _my_ motivations for writing, which you must 
analyse to determine the appropriate response (including none), and when you 
have related these motivations to your own, you will have that 
satisfied and stable feeling of "understanding". Understanding requires 
self-interest and a viewpoint. I can't give you a lookup-table for you to 
understand me, for example. To the contrary, I must attempt to use one part of 
what I think your motivations are against another part -- to create internal 
conflict which will be resolved in you drawing the conclusion I desire. (As 
Socrates demonstrated so long ago.) I can't just reach into your brain and 
rearrange the neurons to perform the "correct" procedure. 
 
      JES
