Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!dali!milton!forbis
From: forbis@milton.acs.washington.edu (Gary Forbis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Hayes vs. Searle
Message-ID: <3883@milton.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 3 Jun 90 01:08:54 GMT
References: <16875@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2629@skye.ed.ac.uk> <24653@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Reply-To: forbis@milton.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis)
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 25

In article <24653@unix.cis.pitt.edu> ml@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Michael Lewis) writes:
>     Searle's man and even his room could be said to "under-
>stand  about"  Chinese symbols but neither will ever "under-
>stand" them.  This is an ecological realist  position  main-
>taining  that  the "meaning" of symbols arises through their
>association with experience not vice versa.

I consider myself fairly well versed in the tricks people use to fool
programs.  No simple program will always pass the Turing test.  The
Chinese Room argument fools many because it places the emphasis on the
wrong observation point.  I want to consider an "American Room" run by
Chinese who are not allowed to stay in the room for more than an hour.
I will withhold judgement on this room for one month.  At the end of that
month I ask "Do you remember our conversation of a month ago?"  If the room
responds, "no," then I withhold judgment.  If the room responds, "yes," then
I continue with the prior conversation.  The memory of the prior conversation
cannot exist in the individual becuase it is not the same individual.  But
there is nothing in the room but the individual and the symbols.  Where is
this memory of a prior experience kept?

When I strip away the layers of symbols and paterns of symbols from myself
that others claim are not understanding I am left with nothing I can find.
Where is this seat of understanding which exist ouside symbols and paterns?

--gary forbis@milton.u.washington.edu