Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!lfcs!arshad
From: arshad@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Arshad Mahmood)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Why the Chinese Room doesn't convince
Keywords: meaning, symbol, understanding
Message-ID: <1623@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 15 Jan 90 21:32:25 GMT
References: <18883@bcsaic.UUCP> <1863@osc.COM>
Reply-To: arshad@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Arshad Mahmood)
Organization: Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U
Lines: 16

Sorry if this sounds like a silly question.

What would the chinese room say to being asked what was my last question ?

For the room to be able to answer the question the person in the room
must now be able to at least tell what this set of symbols means !, one can 
quite correctly say that this can happen as an answer to a host of questions
but I would contend that they are non-trivially similar and the semantics
which has leaked out is fatal to the argument.

I confess to knowing very little about this subject so sorry if this
has already been trivially discarded.

Ash
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