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From: arm@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Macalalad)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: elementary AI philosophy
Message-ID: <9423@ihlpb.ATT.COM>
Date: 17 Jan 89 18:34:43 GMT
References: <18464@santra.UUCP> <1241@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <904@ubu.warwick.UUCP>
Reply-To: arm@ihlpb.UUCP (55528-Macalalad,A.R.)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
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In article <904@ubu.warwick.UUCP> mirk@emerald.UUCP (Mike Taylor) writes:
>I assume that most of you are familiar with Chris Searle's intriguing
>"Chinese Room" objection to the claim of "Strong AI": In a nutshell, that
>a human could hand-simulate any putative AI program without gaining any
>*understanding* of the supposedly cognitive acts involved.  Searle
>concludes from this that we have no evidence to assume that the program
>itself, when running on a computer "understands" as such, (leaving aside
>for now the perrenial problem of exactly what we mean by "undestand").
>

While I am not so familiar with Searle's argument, it seems fairly
clear to me that Searle has made a fundamental error.  He assumes that 
in order for a computer to be intelligent, there must be something
inside the computer that "understands."  Of course, that isn't the
case.  That would be like assuming a little man inside my head that
"understands" for me so that I can be intelligent.  If and when an
intelligent computer is constructed, it will not be the program which
will understand, nor the processor.  It will be the computer as a
whole.

-Alex