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From: jgk@osc.COM (Joe Keane)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Why the Chinese Room doesn't convince
Summary: What is a meaning, and why doesn't the Chinese Room have them?
Keywords: meaning, symbol, understanding
Message-ID: <1863@osc.COM>
Date: 15 Jan 90 00:38:32 GMT
References: <18883@bcsaic.UUCP>
Reply-To: jgk@osc.COM (Joe Keane)
Followup-To: comp.ai
Organization: Object Sciences Corp., Menlo Park, CA
Lines: 76

In article <18883@bcsaic.UUCP> ray@bcsaic.UUCP (Ray Allis) writes:
>To me, the situation described is internally inconsistent.  I can't bring
>myself to believe that the Chinese Room will convince native speakers that it
>understands Chinese *unless it really does understand Chinese*.  I am forced
>to something like the "systems reply", i.e.  either the Room understands, or
>it does not perform as well as a native Chinese speaker.  If the Room's
>utterances are indistinguishable from those of a native Chinese speaker, then
>it must understand about as much as that speaker does about the way the world
>works, and the human condition.  This is basically a behaviorist view of
>"understanding".

So according to the behaviorist view, the Chinese Room must understand Chinese
in order to perform as well as a native Chinese speaker.  I agree this is
true, although somewhat irrelevant since it's just talking about the meaning
of `understand'.  But anyway, you apparently do not believe that the Chinese
Room can understand.  We'll see why...

>There is nothing intrinsic in the words to determine their meaning.  This is
>true in general for symbols.  We (John and I) must hope that we have
>developed similar meanings, each through our individual experience, for the
>symbols we use.  We depend on this assumption for communication with each
>other.  We can send symbols back and forth, but not meanings.  
>[...]
>And this is the normal situation: we speak and write, we listen and read, and
>nowhere is there logical certainty that we attach identical meaning to the
>symbols.  In fact, we suspect that identity is quite unlikely, but with
>practice, *from experience* we infer (induce) that we are communicating, and
>assisted by feedback from our fellow conversants, we refine and sharpen until
>we judge that we all "understand" (or give up in frustration).  That's the
>situation each of us is in vis-a-vis the others.  (Wait a minute, are you
>really people?)

This is a good point; we don't get `meanings' or `understanding' by some sort
of meaning telepathy.  They are communicated through those dreaded symbols.

>Inside the Chinese Room there is only a "symbol system"; only marked pieces
>of paper are manipulated; there are no meanings present.

Here's where you lose me, with `only', `only', and an invalid conclusion.  If
you ask the Chinese Room for the meaning of a Chinese word, it will tell you.
This is certainly easy to do, you just have to include a Chinese dictionary.
Of course you probably want usage examples, connotations, and similar things,
just like any native speaker would have.

>There is no way for the Chinese Room to "build up a picture" from an incoming
>"message" or "question".

I'd say there is.

>Actually these are "questions" only when they are outside the Room, because
>their meanings exist only in minds.

Now i see what your assumptions are.  If you assume there's such thing as a
`mind', that meanings can only exist in a mind, and that minds only exist in
human brains, then why don't you just say that?  Then this whole post is
begging the question (NPI).

>Inside the Room there is no possibility for contradiction and the notion of
>consistency does not apply.  There is no "reality check".  (This is why I
>don't believe a Chinese Room could fool anybody.)

For someone who thinks the Chinese Room can't exist, you sure know a lot about
how it works.  _Why_ can't you have consistency; _why_ are there no `reality
checks'?  Seems plausible to me.

>Inside *any* symbol system it is the same; there is no meaning present.
>"Understanding" in the sense of "apprehending meaning" clearly cannot exist
>inside a symbol system.
>[...]
>(4) Isn't it obvious that diagnosis, model-based reasoning, natural language
>understanding et. al. MUST be futile with nothing but tokens; no MEANINGS? 

Give _me_ a break.  `clearly', `obvious' to you maybe.  Tell me, what is a
MEANING?  What do you need to do to be able to know what something means?
Give me any sort of test, and i'll be happy.  If there's no test, you're not
talking about something in the real world.