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From: aipdc@castle.ed.ac.uk (Paul D. Crowley)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Hayes vs. Searle
Message-ID: <4672@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 12 Jun 90 14:11:03 GMT
References: <16960@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2687@skye.ed.ac.uk> <36091@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <587@dlogics.COM>
Reply-To: aipdc@castle.ed.ac.uk (Paul D. Crowley)
Organization: Edinburgh University Computing Service
Lines: 25

Anything can be in the book - Searle does not specify that the book is a
list of questions and answers.  If we say "we've built an AI using
neural nets" then the book is a list of the status of all the neurons,
with instructions at the beginning as to how to alter them.  Whatever
program is written can be implemented as a room.  The guy in the room
follows the instructions in this humungous book and eventually finds out
what characters to draw.  The room is a perfectly reasonable
philosophical idea: the guy takes a pill which means that he lives
forever, and sits in this room in which time runs much faster than it
does outside, and follows the instructions in the book for the rest of
eternity. 

(Searle puts himself in the room - I think this is probably fitting
punishment.)

Not that I'm defending Searle.  Many posters have quite correctly
pointed out that "understanding" is such a useless word that Searle
hasn't said much anyway:  but he has said that there is _some_
fundamental difference between silicon and neuron which means that
neuron can do something that silicon can't, and I don't see why we
should let even that pass. 

-- 
\/ o\ Paul Crowley aipdc@uk.ac.ed.castle
/\__/ "Trust me, I know what I'm doing" - Sledge Hammer