Xref: utzoo talk.philosophy.misc:3914 comp.ai:6583 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!zds-ux!gerry From: gerry@zds-ux.UUCP (Gerry Gleason) Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai Subject: Re: Why the Chinese Room doesn't convince Message-ID: <265@zds-ux.UUCP> Date: 12 Apr 90 18:14:27 GMT References: <1990Apr11.173241.6428@maths.tcd.ie> Reply-To: gerry@zds-ux.UUCP (Gerry Gleason) Followup-To: talk.philosophy.misc Organization: Zenith Data Systems Lines: 15 In article <1990Apr11.173241.6428@maths.tcd.ie> ftoomey@maths.tcd.ie (Fergal Toomey) writes: >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.. :-) ). Do you reject the idea that large differences in complexity, can manifest as qualitative differences? Yes, in principle both of these games are formal systems that are finite, but in the case of chess, you cannot possibly generate a list of all possible games in a "realisable" amount of time (e.g. a person or societies lifetime). You need to argue that it is valid to ignore this difference in complexity. Gerry Gleason