Xref: utzoo talk.philosophy.misc:3879 comp.ai:6528 Path: utzoo!attcan!lsuc!maccs!cs4g6at From: cs4g6at@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Shelley CP) Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai Subject: Re: Why the Chinese Room doesn't convince Summary: I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid :> Keywords: Searle, CR, system, understanding Message-ID: <261FEABA.27942@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca> Date: 9 Apr 90 01:51:53 GMT References: <23100@mimsy.umd.edu> <1990Mar19.153959.6113@sjuphil.uucp> <0541@sheol.UUCP> <1990Mar26.155415.21756@sjuphil.uucp> <0556@sheol.UUCP> <1990Apr3.162019.27598@maths.tcd.ie> <40927@ism780c.isc.com> <170V025P9ate01@amdahl Organization: McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario Lines: 43 I have been somewhat underwhelmed by the infamous Chinese Room Problem which I have heard so much about. The recent Scientific American article which carried a short discussion of it, stated that the combination of room + operator + rulebook 'obviously' didn't "understand" Chinese despite behaving as if it did because our (the reader's) priviledged viewpoint allowed us to see the absurdity of the claim. I frankly see nothing absurd in it at all! The observers of the room were quite correct to conclude that the room understood chinese (given the conditions stated). The problem, as I see it, comes from resorting to the god's-eye-view in order to make a rebuttal. We will *never* have such a priviledge in real life (to assume otherwise is questionable), so why accept such an arguement in a Gedankenexperiment? To resort to the chess-playing example: in order to determine if both/either of the computer and human (whoever he is) actually knows chess, the observer will need to "understand" chess himself! His decision on who really knows chess will be self-referencially based on his own knowledge of the game. Utimately, one necessarily requires intelligence to evalute intelligence. How do we test our own intelligence? Cogito intellegere, ergo intellego? (What does this say about my latin? :) I have heard of no "Von Neumann" axiomatization that gets around this self-referential problem. The god's eye point of view runs into the something like Goedel's incompleteness, how many metas are too many - ie. who determines if god is intelligent? I think the problem is likely to turn out as undecidable. Perhaps the only way to determine if a computer program will ever be "intelligent" is to wait until one asks us if we are "intelligent"! PS. I attended a lecture a couple of years ago given by Dr. Putnam and although I don't recall any details, I don't remember being very convinced. I felt very much that one or both of us did not understand what he was talking about! Is one of us not "intelligent" on the subject of computer intelligence? :> Cameron Shelley -- ****************************************************************************** * Cameron Shelley * Return Path: cs4g6at@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca * ****************************************************************************** * /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ /\\ *