Xref: utzoo talk.philosophy.misc:3900 comp.ai:6560 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!sun-barr!newstop!sun!amdahl!kp From: kp@uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting) Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai Subject: Re: Why the Chinese Room doesn't convince Summary: Understanding comes from arguing! Keywords: understanding, consciousness, arguing, CR, Searle, Minsky Message-ID: <83oq020b9bjL01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> Date: 11 Apr 90 02:06:46 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 <1990Apr6.14494 Reply-To: kp@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting) Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA Lines: 143 In article <1990Apr9.063331.15478@cs.umn.edu> hougen@cs.umn.edu (Dean Hougen) writes: > >Returning to the chess example, if you were to approach the typical chess >player and comment, "Ya know, I don't think Kasparov understands chess," >you would likely get, "But he's the world chess champion," or "Hey, he >beat Karpov, didn't he?" or something similar as a reply, not "He can >explain why he lost the second game of that match, can't he?" or anything >along those lines. . . . These would be reasonable replies, especially because they indicate that the comment seems absurd. But there are other reasonable replies, eg, "Are you saying that Kasparov is an _idiot savant_?" or "Check out Capablanca's old book - that guy *really* understood chess". The easy part of this point is that there is a clear difference between two different kinds of behavior - playing chess and talking about chess. Playing chess is intellectually demanding, so for this reason (among others) it is unlikely that anyone who plays chess well would lack the ability to talk about it. The hard part is: what's the connection? > . . . in Ken's article (message-id: ><7cn102fg9ahA01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com>) where playing chess is reduced >to "being able to" do something, and understanding chess is redefined to >be a level above(?) this. A well-placed question mark. If the activity of playing chess can be described as linguistic (imagine postcard chess), then a conversation about chess would be conducted in a metalanguage. But I would deny emphatically that the ability to talk about chess is usefully described as a "meta-ability", or "on a different level" from playing chess. A similar point would apply to a conversation about linguistics, or about meta-mathematics. Conversations about language are still conversations, and proofs about proofs or models are still proofs. >. . . The hint-machine will only "be able to" give >hints/explain games, it won't *understand chess*. I don't expect Ken >to follow to this position, but I would ask him to consider how he got >where he is. The same for Fergal. The distinction between know-how and knowledge goes (at least) as far back as Plato (techne' vs. episteme'). > >. . . ask some of the doctors how they go about making diagnoses. >. . . Some, in fact, will make up partially false >explanations in order to cover the fact that they cannot give adequate >explanations! This is a very significant observation. I would say that the essential attribute of a conscious agent is that after proposing an incoherent or inadequate explanation of its behavior, it is capable of entering into an *argument* regarding that explanation, which involves two kinds of premises: 1) Logical laws applied normatively, as in, "That explanation is wrong, because the explanandum is not a consequence of the explanans" 1a) (more important, but not directly applicable to diagnosis:) Principles of rational decision theory applied normatively, as in, "That action is irrational given your stated beliefs and desires, because its expected outcome is strongly dis-preferred" 2) Factual descriptions of the agent's own behavior, as in "You could not have made that diagnosis on the basis of the X-ray, because you did not look at the X-ray" (It should be noted that such an argument can only be conducted in a language which is semantically closed) Chess and medical diagnosis are difficult (but interesting) cases of the distinction between techne and episteme, because of the importance of rules in the behaviors themselves. Simply to participate in a game of chess requires that one be able to participate in arguments which meet the above criteria, with "rules of chess" replacing "logical laws". In medical diagnosis (but less so in pure science) arguments about the specific information-collecting actions of the doctor might be considered _ad hominem_, or as professional attacks. > >But if to understand medical diagnosis means to be able to give >explanations of how such diagnoses are made, then these doctors don't >understand medical diagnosis! There are two different kinds of explanation to ask for. One is an account of the epistemic basis of a particular diagnosis, the other is a description of the mental (ie psychological) process which produced the behavior of stating the diagnosis. Certainly a doctor who cannot offer an explanation of the first type would be of limited use to students, whatever his value to patients. Would an explanation of the first type *constitute* an explanation of the second? That is an empirical hypothesis, and if I understand the Computationalists, it is very close to their claim. IMO, there is no _a priori_ reason to find that claim plausible. Let me emphasize that while I disagree strongly with Computationalism, I also see no reason to suppose that a computer cannot be programmed to participate in the required sort of behavior. > > . . . we can now say with a straight face that a >human expert acting as an expert within his own field of expertise >doesn't understand his own field of expertise! ... (Whom, pray tell, are you accusing of straight-facedness? :-) Once we have distinguished between explanations of why a diagnosis is plausible and explanations of how diagnostic behavior is generated, we can laugh all the way back to our keyboards. *After* thanking Prof. Searle for his instructive (though misinformed) counter-example, I would say. The CR is not a real problem for AI. The real problems are: (a) over- reacting to the CR (ala TTTTT...), and (b) ignoring the CR (ala Minsky). Minsky is right - self knowledge is dangerous. So's life in the Big City. (cf _The Society of Mind_, section 6.13) > .... Perhaps it is time to give serious consideration to >whether, just perhaps, the novice+list *does* understand chess. Hogwash! The novice, ex hypothesi, cannot even distinguish a legal move from an illegal move. Could he learn to do so? His list furnishes enough information for him to infer the rules of chess, but if he did so, he would cease to be a novice. (It is debatable whether there is any semantics of chess, even if it is conceived as a language) The rulebooks of the Chinese Room likewise furnish enough information to allow Searle to infer the syntax of Chinese, but he could no more learn the semantics of Chinese from the books than he could learn its phonetics. What he needs is a set of books that describe more than symbol manipulation. (I've tried to trim a little fuzz off the concept of "understanding", but I still think we'll be better off if we drop the general question of how to define it, and focus on *what information* is contained in programs) Ken Presting ("Leave the hairsplitting to us")