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From: staff_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument
Message-ID: <1901@tank.uchicago.edu>
Date: 17 Feb 89 17:58:47 GMT
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Organization: University of Chicago Graduate School of Business
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>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?
>
[deleted] 
>Karl Kluge (kck@g.cs.cmu.edu)

I seem to have gotten lost in this discussion. Perhaps someone can help
me out of this. Without ever having read the now infamous 'Chinese Room
Argument', my understading of it is as follows: 

Given any natural language, in this case Chinese, it is possible for
someone with the proper tools (e.g. a dictionary, a grammar book and lots
and lots of time) to communicate in that language without really 
'understanding' the language. The theory is that such translation, which
involves nothing but the manipulation of symbols, requires no actual
understanding of the language. Since this is what computers do,
computers do not 'understand' the language they are translating.

Is this at least the jist of the argument?

Suppose that it is. Those of you who have said that yes, the translator
'understands' what he is translating, seem to be stretching my commonplace
definition of understanding more than just a little. This does not vindicate
Searle, but I think proceding along these lines is rhetorical sophistry.
Arguing about what constitutes 'understanding' does not make Searle's
point disappear. 

In particular, consider the recent argument that if a Chinese speaking person
thinks I understand Chinese, then I must in fact understand it, regardless
of what *I* believe I understand. To me, this seems consistent with the
prevalent 'native speaker' definition of language, and so plausible on the
surface. On deeper consideration, however, one sees that the argument is
being used to subvert itself. Searle thinks he knows what 'understand' means,
and as a native speaker of his own language, I suppose he has that right. 
One cannot seriously use the 'native' understanding of a Chinaman to invalidate
my own understanding of English. If you buy into this definition of
lingusitic validitiy, then you shouldn't quibble with definitions at
all. If, as a native speaker,  I say I don't 'understand', then I don't.
Period.

Yes, Searle does 'play fast and loose' with his definitions. Unfortunately,
the 'native speaker' argument allows him to do exactly that.

The point I'm trying to make here is that argument along these lines is
generally not productive. Disputing defintions, and derivations based on
those defintions, has unfortunately become a part of our (Western)
intellectual heritage. When Minsky says that words should be our servants,
and not our masters, is he not recognizing this very fact? A definition
is generally not a theorem, and it is a mistake to reason from a definition
as if it were a theorem. Anyone who takes a moment to reflect should realize
the Searle is making a valid point - there is a difference between what
I (and Searle) call understanding and what this supposed translator is doing 
in his Chinese Room. If Minsky, or anyone else, has a different definition
of understanding, so be it. That in itself does not invalidate the point
which Searle is trying to make.

The problem with Searle's argument, as I see it, is equally obvious. Anyone
who has ever studied a language, or who has tried to write a program to
do so knows that one need substantially more than a dictionary and a grammar
to do the job. Serious thinkers no longer believe that simple symbol 
manipulation is up to the task. In part, this is because of the context
sensitivity of language. In general, it is a result of the fact that a
(natural) language is not a self contained mathematical system. 
Understanding language requires a context of understanding which is 
larger than the atoms and rules which can be said to constitute a particular 
language. 

In part, Searle's human translator possesses this context. But this fact
works against Searle, not for him. If the human, qua human, cannot be
said to 'understand', then certainly the machine cannot. That much is
clear. However, this sidesteps the fact that even with the sort of domain 
knowledge which all humans have, and which seems requisite to true 
understanding, I don't believe that a human being could actually accomplish 
the task assigned him in his Chinese Room. If one somehow limits the language 
domain so that a human could, I suspect that a machine could also. Fooling a 
native language speaker is not an easy task, a fact that can be attested to 
by any one of millions of immigrants living in this country.

(For an excellent proof of this, see yesterday's posting to 
REC.HUMOR.FUNNY entitled 'Signs Of Our Times', which contains any number of
hilariously funny 'translations', many of which seem to have been
made by people with some knowledge of English and a dictionary. One
of my personal philosophical interests is why people find such mistakes so very
humorous.)

My point then, is this: to successfully translate a language, a human
being needs not only a grammar and a vocabulary and the domain knowledge
which is his by virtue of being human. He needs something else - at least
of modicum of 'understanding' of the particular language he is translating.
The problem with machine translation is not primarily one of syntactic
transformation and word substitution. If it were, we would have mastered
machine translation 10 years ago, and Searle's argument against machine
understanding would be valid. The problem with machine translation today
is that we must impart to the machine not only a knowledge of the nuances of 
the language being translated, but we must also give it much of the domain 
knowledge which we, as humans, take very much for granted. If (and this
is not a very small if) we ever manage to accomplish this, and thereby 
establish a proper context for machine translation, then as I see it, Searle 
is unable to argue that we have not also established a context for machine 
understanding.

I suppose that it is technically true that everything done on a computer
can be reduced to the level of abstract symbol processing. To point to
this low level of computer processing and then to talk about the very
high level capabilities of the human brain and ask 'How can one be the other?'
is rhetoric of the very worst kind. To begin with, it ignores the fact that
we can reduce the operations of the brain to a very low level and then show,
mathematically, that the computational capabilities of neurons and 
computers are in fact equivalent. What Searle points to as evidence of
man's difference from machines are direct consequences of the incredibly
complex organization of these low level neurons, which has been achieved
only after billions of years of evolution. There is as yet no theorectical
reason why we cannot eventually learn to create similarly complex machines.
If we understood how neurons can be organized in such a way as to produce
cognitive functions such as 'understanding' or 'creativity', then we could
say exactly how 'one can be the other'. Until then, arguments such as
these are most likely going to be quite common .