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From: martin@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (david l. martin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Hayes vs. Searle
Message-ID: <36091@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 8 Jun 90 16:52:23 GMT
References: <16960@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2687@skye.ed.ac.uk> <17046@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
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In article <17046@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) writes:

>He [Searle] 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.

This seems a confused line of argument to me.  You seem to be saying that
_if_ the Chinese language can be captured in a rule book, then the English
language can be captured in a rule book, and moreover, it _must be_ that
Searle is just manipulating rules when he speaks English, which leads to
a contradiction.  In the first place, just because English hypothetically
could be captured in a rule book, how does it automatically follow that
Searle is _just_ manipulating those rules when he speaks English?

Secondly, and more important, the assumption that the Chinese rule book
could exist is just that - an assumption made for the purposes
of a reductio argument.  For a computer program to pass the Turing test in
Chinese, some set of rules about responding to Chinese would have to be laid
down in the program (that's just what the program would be).  
Let's grant that, Searle says, and then ask whether the computer
understands.  It seems to me that if you don't won't to grant that,
it's true that Searle's argument doesn't get off the ground, but it's
also true that you've already ruled out the possibility of a computer
passing the Turing test in the first place.

Dave Martin