Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!jeff
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Hayes vs. Searle
Message-ID: <2687@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 5 Jun 90 19:33:22 GMT
References: <16875@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2629@skye.ed.ac.uk> <16960@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 15

In article <16960@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) writes:
;In article <2629@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
;;                                                    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.

;How's this for intuitive appeal: no such "book" as the one Searle presupposes
;can exist. If this were true, then the argument is based on an impossible
;premise, hence there's no argument.

Not bad, but a program could be printed, and there's the book.
If you think Searle couldn't work fast enough, imagine that he
has 1000 helpers.