Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!eliot
From: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Hayes vs. Searle
Message-ID: <17046@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 7 Jun 90 07:19:45 GMT
References: <16875@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2629@skye.ed.ac.uk> <16960@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2687@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman)
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 31

In article <2687@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
;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.

He could have 1,000,000 helpers and it wouldn't make any difference.
The chinese room argument uses the word "understand" in two different 
ways: Searle doesn't understand the chinese language, and Searle doesn't 
understand the import of the symbols he's manipulating. If it's possible to 
encode all answers to any possible question via rules without referents, 
as is posited by the book of rules Searle has in hand, then the chinese 
language itself (or any other language) is just as plausibly a bunch of 
rules, nothing more.  Searle manipulating rules doesn't understand; therefore 
Searle speaking English is really just manipulating rules of the english 
language and isn't therefore understanding English, which is absurd.  
Conclusion, rules insufficient for encoding of language as is commonly 
used: therefore Searle Chinese rule book can't exist, end of argument.

--eliot