Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!agate!garnet.berkeley.edu!jwl
From: jwl@garnet.berkeley.edu (James Wilbur Lewis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Chinese Room Experiment: empirical tests
Message-ID: <1990Dec1.030850.29382@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 1 Dec 90 03:08:50 GMT
References: <7852@uwm.edu> <1990Nov26.055429.8883@agate.berkeley.edu> <7989@uwm.edu>
Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 34

In article <7989@uwm.edu> markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes:
-On the question:
-If you undergo intensive immersion training of a language using no translation
-references is it possible to eventually converge onto an understanding of that
-language?
-
-In article <1990Nov26.055429.8883@agate.berkeley.edu> jwl@garnet.berkeley.edu (James Wilbur Lewis) writes:
->I'll buy the idea that you might have a good feel for the syntax of a language
->after such an intensive program of imitation, but *understanding*, in the sense
->that Searle uses the term?  No way!
-
-A very similar situation is going on collectively with researchers who are
-progressively deciphering Mayan Hieroglyphic text ... and recently there has
-been some success at partially undercovering the meaning of the symbols.

Ok, but remember, you stipulated "no analysis, just copying" in your original
post -- these folks are doing something (intensve analysis) quite different 
from what you proposed!

-Even the little understanding accomplished to date is enough to prove that
-understanding may be possible without any substantial external references...

I guess the interesting question is "how much of a reference do you need?"
What is the "critical mass" of semantic content you need to infer from
other sources before you can start bootstrapping your degree of understanding?
How much of a reference do we have with respect to an unknown human culture,
just by virtue of the fact that, as humans, a large kernel of knowledge and
experiences are going to be represented in both our "knowledge bases"?

Is SETI doomed from the start, or would we be able to communicate with a
hypothetical extra-terrestrial culture given only that we both possess the
ability to (say) send and receive radio signals?

-- Jim Lewis