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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Penrose and Searle (was Re: Roger Penrose's fixed ideas)
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Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 18:02:48 GMT
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In article <Czu5zD.Dto@festival.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>In article <JMC.94Nov22011226@white.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il> jmc@white.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il (McCarthy John) writes:
>
>>Imagine that the procedure that the man in the Chinese room were performing
>>unbeknownst to him were simulating an abacus rather than translating Chinese.
>>Would the Searle argument then prove that a machine can't do arithmetic?
>
>Yes. The interesting point is that we are (nearly all of us) happy to
>extend the meaing of "add" to include what calculators do, but not (so
>many of us) to extend "understanding" to computers which get the
>behaviour right. This is partly just an accident of language, like the
>accident that makes us happy to accept that areoplanes can really fly,
>but equally certain that submarines do not swim, but there is more to
>it. "Adding" is a low level menial activity that we are quite happy to
>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.

Bull.

>In principle you are quite right. The Chinese Room argument implies
>that calculators do not add numbers,

No it doesn't.

-- jeff
