Xref: utzoo talk.philosophy.misc:3896 comp.ai:6554 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!cica!iuvax!rutgers!umn-d-ub!cs.umn.edu!thornley From: thornley@cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley) Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai Subject: Re: Why the Chinese Room doesn't convince Message-ID: <1990Apr10.202829.2080@cs.umn.edu> Date: 10 Apr 90 20:28:29 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> <1990Apr5.202224.27534@caen.en <1990Apr10.1026 Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis - CSCI Dept. Lines: 47 In article <1990Apr10.102610.5376@maths.tcd.ie> ftoomey@maths.tcd.ie (Fergal Toomey) writes: >In article <1990Apr8.191524.6565@cs.umn.edu> hougen@cs.umn.edu >(Dean Hougen) writes: > >>In article <1990Apr6.144947.11473@maths.tcd.ie>, ftoomey@maths.tcd.ie >> (Fergal Toomey)writes: >>>he is capable of carrying out simple instructions. He is also capable >>>of speaking English fluently. He is given a long list of instructions >>>from Gary Kasparov telling him exactly what move to make in every >>>board situation that can possibly arise during a chess game (the number >>>of possible board configurations is very, very high, but finite). You >> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >>Too high for the list to ever be created but this is a thought experiment >>so we can give him this list for purposes of our investigation anyway. >>But why do you feel the need to mention that it is finite? > >If it were infinitely long, it would clearly take an infinite length of >time to produce, in which case my argument would fall through, since it >would not be possible, using this method, to construct a thing capable >of playing chess as well as Gary Kasparov. I seriously question the validity of this. The number of possible positions is sufficiently high that it may as well be infinite, since it is not possible to enumerate them (at, say, a thousand per second) within the expected lifespan of the universe, nor would a human-readable version come anywhere near fitting on this planet. Therefore, the list is impossible. The novice must have something else from Kasparov, perhaps a computer program or a chess book of a quality never yet approached. The key difference here is that it is obvious that a list understands nothing, and a person using a list does not have to understand anything. If you equip the novice with a computer or a book so that novice+gimmick can play as well as Kasparov, it gets very iffy if the novice+gimmick should be referred to as understanding chess, since the system must analyze the board situation in some manner or other. The reason I am so insistent on this part of the argument is that the list technique is so universally applicable. If a list is drawn up of all possible hour-long conversations in Chinese, we have a Chinese room with no understanding. Since so much of human interaction is quantifiable, and hence listable, the Turing test is obviously ridiculous if its opponents are allowed to propose a counterexample beginning with "First we construct this list with 10 ** 30000 items." David Thornley