Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!PROOF.ERGO.CS.CMU.EDU!tsf From: tsf@PROOF.ERGO.CS.CMU.EDU (Timothy Freeman) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: letter to THE NEW YORK REVIEW concerning AI Keywords: Searle, Chinese room, Minsky Message-ID: <4297@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Date: 17 Feb 89 02:08:56 GMT References: <7471@venera.isi.edu> <7507@venera.isi.edu> Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI Lines: 29 In article harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Stevan Harnad) writes: >Tell me, down there in the trenches, can you still tell the difference >between this: (1) "Koran reggel ritkan rikkant a rigo" and this: (2) >"How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck >wood"? Call that difference "X." X is all that's at issue in the >Chinese Room Argument. Seems like X is a label for a subjective phenomenon. The funny thing is, people are able to respond to sequences of words sometimes without having "X" (in hypnosis or experiments with subliminal messages, for instance). Another funny thing is that I have had "X" even though the message didn't make enough sense to me for me to be able to use it (several times in college, for instance). Do you want "understanding" to mean the subjective sense of knowing what is going on (which seems to be "X") or the behavioral aspect (which would require some sort of behavioral test to show that the "understander" is actually able to make use of the information)? The subjective sensation is, in itself, totally useless. The behavior of the participating systems is what matters. -- Tim Freeman Arpanet: tsf@theory.cs.cmu.edu Uucp: ...!seismo.css.gov!theory.cs.cmu.edu!tsf (Or maybe try changing "theory" to "proof.ergo" in any of the above.) --