Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!venera.isi.edu!smoliar From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Hayes vs. Searle Summary: hitting the analytic wall Message-ID: <13772@venera.isi.edu> Date: 5 Jun 90 03:39:34 GMT References: <16875@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2629@skye.ed.ac.uk> Sender: news@venera.isi.edu Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute Lines: 69 In article <2629@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes: > >The AI community must be pretty annoyed with Searle by now. He >writes papers, gives talks, inspires newspaper articles. In the >UK (at least), he even hosted his own philosophical chat show. >And throughout it all he refuses to accept that his simple little >argument just doesn't show what he thinks it does. It would be >nice, therefore, to have a straightforward refutation of the >Chinese Room, preferably one with some intuitive appeal, and even >better, I suppose, if it could be shown that Searle was in the >grip of a fundamental misunderstanding of computation. > Isn't there a point in A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS where Common Man says, "And I wish we all had wings and could fly up to Heaven?" I used to have a .signature in which Mencken claimed that every complicated problem has a simple solution . . . which is wrong. The whole reason Searle's pot keeps boiling is that everyone thinks that issues like "understanding" can be resolved by a simple appeal to intuition . . . if only we finally figure out the right angle from which to view things. What if there IS no "right angle?" What if "understanding" is, by its very nature, a rather vague and sloppy word which we can use socially because the dynamics of discourse can keep up from wandering too far off the track but which may never be able to pin down in any serious analytic sense? If "understanding" is, indeed, such a slippery piece of terminology, then Searle can always be very clever about encouraging it to slither away from any attempt to refute his argument. There seems to be only one sensible way out for those who are serious about DOING artificial intelligence: DON'T MESS AROUND WITH WORDS LIKE "UNDERSTANDING!" There is a new view of computer science which I seem to have discovered independently of several colleagues who have made similar observations in different contexts. The way I like to formulate it is that we study computer science in order to get a better grasp on what we are talking about. When the computer is analytical, it is so in the most rigorous sense of the word; and if WE want to be analytical, the ultimate proof of our pudding lies in our ability to implement our theory on a computer. John Pollock has observed that the computer is now a sufficiently powerful tool that one can no longer do epistemology from the comfort of one's armchair. Any theory of epistemology today must be held up to the test of validation through a computer model (or so says Pollock). Gian-Carlo Rota has offered similar opinions in the arena of phenomenology. In the presence of such a powerful tool for our own thinking, what are we to make of Searle. He writes as if his only contact with a computer is through its capacity as a word processor. He seems to believe that if he can understand THAT aspect of the machine, he knows all he needs to know. It does not take much computer literacy to see how ludicrous such a position is, and anyone who appreciates such naivete has every right to be annoyed with the man. However, this annoyance will not be resolved by simple answers (which is why Searle can make a television personality out of himself, since even on the BBC television thrives on reducing issues to simple conclusions). Let Searle have his way with those who strive for simplicity, and let those who recognize that those problems are too elusive to take seriously go about their business of laying out better-formed problems. ========================================================================= USPS: Stephen Smoliar USC Information Sciences Institute 4676 Admiralty Way Suite 1001 Marina del Rey, California 90292-6695 Internet: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu "So, philosophers of science have been fascinated with the fact that elephants and mice would fall at the same rate if dropped from the Tower of Pisa, but not much interested in how elephants and mice got to be such different sizes in the first place." R. C. Lewontin