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From: cw2k+@andrew.cmu.edu (Christopher L. Welles)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle, Strong AI, and Chinese Rooms
Message-ID: <QbF56a600VsL1HVEcf@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: 16 Nov 90 20:52:54 GMT
References: <1990Nov15.204949.12075@Solbourne.COM>
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 50
In-Reply-To: <1990Nov15.204949.12075@Solbourne.COM>

In <1990Nov15.204949.12075@Solbourne.COM> Vic Schoenberg says:
In response to Svend Fjerdingstad
>>       The consequences of this statement are absurd: If his statement is
>> correct, then he has proven nothing more, than that it should be possible
> >for a person ignorant of Chinese to pass the Turing test for speaking
> >Chinese. 
>
>This is one of the points Searle wished to establish, that the Turing
>Test is inadequate.

It appears you've missed the whole point of what Svend was trying to
say.  Just the fact that a part of the system, a logical part, not
physical part, does not understand, does not mean that the  system as a
whole does not understand.  It is not actually the person, as Svend had
said, that passes the turning test, but the system as a whole, rules and
all.  The place Svend made a mistake was in just assuming what was meant
would be understood.

It seems those people who actually understand the systems reply take it
for granted that others do.  As for myself, it's hard to imagine not
understanding the systems reply.  It just seems obvious.  So obvious, in
fact, that it is difficult to communicate the reasoning behind it.  It
seems to be a conceptual leap of sorts.

Let me try to explain the concept once again.  Let us take you for
example.  When photons of light strike your eye, a complex series of
chemical reactions take place resulting in pulses being sent from the
nerve.  If we traced these pulses throughout the whole brain, they would
still only be pulses, or at least would result in specific physical
reactions.  We can define all those physical reactions as rules. 
Throughout the whole brain, you can follow all the pulses, all the
chemical reactions, and they won't mean a thing to you.  It's only the
system itself that sees any meaning.  It's doesn't even realize they are
pulses! The two views of what's going on are from completely different
view points.

If you still don't understand, I'm at a loss.  I'm strongly inclined to
take the viewpoint that Svend did:  "that the people most strongly
opposed to the notion of artificial intelligence are sometimes those,
who seem less well endowed with natural intelligence."  I just don't
know how to state it more clearly!

I'm curious though.  There is the question of why some people seem to
understand the Systems Reply, while others have no concept of what it
means.  Could programming experience have something to do with it.  It
just seems to be that those people who understand the systems reply are
those very same people who understand why a computer can be built out of
toilet paper and rocks.

			<<<<< Chris >>>>>