Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!g.gp.cs.cmu.edu!kck
From: kck@g.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Karl Kluge)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Question on Chinese Room Argument
Message-ID: <4298@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 17 Feb 89 02:39:48 GMT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 36

> From: harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Stevan Harnad)
> 
> 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. No word games.

Ah, but it is a word game. Here is Searle's Chinese Room argument as I see
it. We have Mind A, which we will call John Searle, which understands
English, and which in its capacity as a Universal Turing Machine is
emulating Mind B, which we will call Fu Bar.  Mind A, John Searle, does not
understand what is going on in Mind B, Fu Bar, whose execution it is
simulating.

So what? How does this in any way, shape, or form establish that Mind B does
not understand Chinese in exactly the way that Mind A understands English?

Suppose that Searle underwent some traumatic experience that led to his
suffering from multiple personality disorder in such a way that personality
1 was the usual old John Searle, while personality 2 did nothing but execute
the rules for manipulating Chinese characters (to the point of not
responding to English). What possible conclusion could any rational
individual encountering this unfortunate make other than that his body
contained two minds, one speaking and understanding English, and the other
reading and writing in Chinese. How, without the benefit of introspection
that we are positing is missing, could Searle deny that this other mind
running on his brain really "understood" Chinese?

I'm very serious about this, I really don't understand the point Searle
believes he is making (or at least, I don't buy that he proves the point - I
don't buy the analogy with simulating a forest fire).

Karl Kluge (kck@g.cs.cmu.edu)


--