Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aipna!cam
From: cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: No more Chinese rooms, please?
Message-ID: <2551@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 26 Jun 90 23:41:23 GMT
References: <25422@cs.yale.edu> <593@ntpdvp1.UUCP> <965@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <36453@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Reply-To: cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Organization: Dept of AI, Edinburgh University, UK.
Lines: 26

In article <36453@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> martin@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (david l. martin) writes:
>In article <965@idunno.Princeton.EDU> markv@gauss.Princeton.EDU (Mark VandeWettering) writes:

>>	Searle's language is CRIMINALLY loose.  Concepts such as understanding,
>>	causal powers, the distinction between syntax and semantics are 
>>	not ever defined in any paper of his that I have read.
>>	his recent Scientific American article was not a "proof": he merely
>>	assumed that his conclusion was correct and proceeded.

>Note that to the extent
>that the above 2 claims were in fact made by AI researchers, they were the
>ones who initiated the "loose" usage of concepts such as understanding, etc.

Hold on a minute! "Understanding" etc. were being used "loosely" (in the
sense of lacking precise definitions) by English speakers, psychologists,
and philosophers long before AI was thought of, as were their cognates in
other languages, such as Latin and Greek, long before the English
language was invented. And lacking a precise definition is not
necessarily a failure in a term: for example, despite centuries of
wrangling, there is still no satisfactorily agreed definition of
mathematics.

-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aipna   031 667 1011 x2550
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK