Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!usc!apple!portal!cup.portal.com!Victoria_Beth_Berdon From: Victoria_Beth_Berdon@cup.portal.com Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: No more Chinese rooms, please? Message-ID: <31329@cup.portal.com> Date: 1 Jul 90 23:00:21 GMT References: <25422@cs.yale.edu> <593@ntpdvp1.UUCP> <965@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <36453@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <2551@aipna.ed.ac.uk> Organization: The Portal System (TM) Lines: 133 (Note: this article is being posted for Ken Presting) > In article <593@ntpdvp1.UUCP>, kenp@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Ken Presting) writes: > > [...stuff deleted...] > > Searle is *not* trying to show that no program can > > think, or that no machine can think. He is too clever for that. He > > is not attacking the *goal* of Strong AI. > > > > He is attacking the *argument* behind Strong AI. This is much easier > > to do, but almost as devastating. Write any program you want, and > > run it any way you want, on any hardware, parallel, serial, or cerebral. > > But if you want to claim that the system is thinking, you'll need a > > better reason than "It's running my program". > > Ken, the only article I have read by Searle was the one in the January > 1990 Scientific American. In that article, it sure seems to me that > Searle is claiming that the Strong AI position is provably wrong, not > only that arguments in its favor are incorrect. This is a very subtle point, and well worth getting straight. In the second paragraph of the Sci.Am. article, Searle says: The question that has been posed ... is, Could a machine think just by virtue of implementing a computer program? On page 27, his Conclusion 1 is: Programs are neither constitutive of nor sufficient for minds. Finally, later on the same page he says: Third, strong AI's thesis is not that, for all we know, computers with the right programs might be thinking, that they might have some as yet undetected psychological properties; rather, it is that they must be thinking because that is all there is to thinking. So you are right that Searle thinks that Strong AI is provably wrong. But I want to emphasize that for Searle, "strong AI" is *not* the straightforward claim that computers can think (someday). It is not even the slightly more sophisticated claim that the right program will make it possible for computers to think. Searle is attacking the claim that "running the right program, by itself, will CERTAINLY make computers think." When he uses phrases like "just by virtue of ..." or "that's all there is to ...", Searle is saying two things: The thesis of Strong AI is not just an atomic sentence, such as "Computers can Think", it is actually an inference, such as, "Programs can make computers think, BECAUSE ". The inference of Strong AI depends on exactly one premise, that the machine is running a certain program. No other premises are allowed. > . . . His Chinese room > argument seemed to be an attempt to prove that *no* program that only > uses symbolic manipulation can ever be said to understand. You are > certainly right that Searle did not go so far as to claim that no > machine can understand, but he sure seemed to be claiming that any > such hypothetical machine must be doing more than symbol manipulation. I guess we pretty much agree on this whole issue, but I thought I should beat it into the ground ... > > Searle's argument seemed to boil down to "if the man doing the > symbol-manipulation doesn't understand, then the Chinese room (man + > rules) doesn't understand", which is equivalent for computers to "if > the cpu doesn't understand, then the cpu running a program doesn't > understand". That claim, if you buy it (I don't) seems to me to > completely rule out the possibility of a computer understanding > anything. > > Daryl McCullough Searle does say (p.27) that he "has not tried to prove that 'a computer cannot think'", so I would say that if you are reading his argument in a way that commits him to the stronger position, you may want to look again. What makes Searle's weaker point (that mind cannot be inferred from programming) interesting is that he does not need to say that Strong AI will fail - but he is saying that there cannot be any reason to believe that it will succeed. That is, I'm not claiming that Searle is trying to undermine any arguments in favor of the goal of Strong AI being possible. What Searle is attacking can be viewed as the pratical arguments behind strong AI as a research program. "We want a smart computer, so let's write a program to make computers smart." Searle is saying that you can program from now till doomsday, and then Totally Turing Test The resulTs for a Thousand lifeTimes. But that will *not* entitle us to conclude that the computer is smart. So in addtion to writing programs, we should be doing something else, presumably related to "causal powers". > In article <593@ntpdvp1.UUCP> kenp@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Ken Presting) writes: > |precise. Searle is trying to prove the following: > | > | For any program P whatsoever, and for any machine M whatsoever, > | the following inference is always invalid: > | > | Machine M runs Program P, therefore Machine M understands. > > In article <25422@cs.yale.edu>, blenko-tom@CS.YALE.EDU (Tom Blenko) writes:> > This is much too strong, and you are arguing against yourself. Searle > claims that functional equivalence does not suffice, that intelligence > is an intensional property. This is presented as a counter to the > "machine-independent" property he ascribes to strong AI advocates. Why do you think this is too strong, or that I'm arguing against myself? > > I believe he makes the claim about biological versus silicon > implementations in his first paper, and I've certainly heard him make > that claim in person. On p.27 of the Sci. Am. article, Searle says: Second, I have not tried to show that only biologically based systems like our brains can think. Right now, those are the only systems that we know for a fact can think, but we might find other systems in the univers that can produce conscious thoughts, and we might even be able to create thinking systems artificially. I think this is a clear statement. Ken Presting ("Burn AFTER reading")