Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!jeff
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Hayes vs. Searle
Message-ID: <2750@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 12 Jun 90 15:06:32 GMT
References: <16875@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2629@skye.ed.ac.uk> <16960@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2687@skye.ed.ac.uk> <17046@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 69

JD = jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
EH = eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman)

New text is the stuff that's not indented.

JD: 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.

EH: 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.

JD: 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.

EH: He could have 1,000,000 helpers and it wouldn't make any difference.


OK, so speed's not the issue.

Nonetheless, if we did have a computer that understood merely by
instantiating the right program (Searle's actual claim is at least
close to that), we could print the program, thus producing the
book.  So if you can show that the book can't exist, it seems to
me that you'll also show that the program can't exist, hence making
the point against strong AI another way.  So the people who would
like to refute Searle wouldn't end up better off, although it
might change which person was going around doing chat shows, etc.


EH: 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.


There remains the possibility that one could answer questions either
with or without understanding, depending on whether one merely used
rules without referents or did some other thing.  Indeed, Searle's
argument addresses precisely this gap between behavior and
understanding; and you haven't rules out the possibility of it
existing.


EH: 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.

I don't see how you get from "any language is just as plausibly
a bunch of rules, nothing more" to "therefore Searle speaking
English is really just manipulating rules".  I think you need
more than "just as plausibly".

    Conclusion, rules insufficient for encoding of language
    as is commonly used: therefore Searle Chinese rule book can't
    exist, end of argument.

Again, this would work as an argument against AI as well as an
argument against Searle.  It might even be a more convincing one.

-- Jeff