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From: ftoomey@maths.tcd.ie (Fergal Toomey)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai
Subject: Re: Why the Chinese Room doesn't convince
Message-ID: <1990Apr11.173241.6428@maths.tcd.ie>
Date: 11 Apr 90 17:32:41 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Maths, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
Lines: 22

In article <1990Apr10.202829.2080@cs.umn.edu> thornley@cs.umn.edu
(David H. Thornley) writes:

>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.

Well, chess came up as a convenient example. Replace with Tic-Tac-Toe
and everything becomes reasonable. I expect that we'll keep the chess
example, however, because *in principle* it is the same as Tic-Tac-Toe
(ie. the ideas involved in understanding chess are the same as those
involved in understanding Tic-Tac-Toe... probably... oh dear.. :-) ).

> David Thornley

Fergal Toomey.