Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!elroy!orion.cf.uci.edu!uci-ics!venera.isi.edu!smoliar From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: letter to THE NEW YORK REVIEW concerning AI Keywords: Searle, Chinese room, Minsky Message-ID: <7551@venera.isi.edu> Date: 17 Feb 89 14:47:06 GMT References: <7471@venera.isi.edu> <7507@venera.isi.edu> Sender: news@venera.isi.edu Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar) Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute Lines: 30 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. No word games. > Remember, all I want to argue is that there is nothing OBVIOUS about that difference X. Perhaps I might be able to illustrate this point with an alternative set of examples. Both of these sentences come from the same source, but I would argue that there will be some number of readers who would be willing to say that they understand one and not the other. Thus, I would be interested in any hypotheses as to why the difference between them is "obvious." Here are the sentences: (1) Where is my gracious Lord of Canterbury? (2) Howbeit, they would hold up this Salique law To bar your Highness claiming from the female, And rather choose to hide them in a net Than amply to imbar their crooked titles Usurp'd from you and your progenitors. (Note: I, personally, have no trouble with either sentence; but I attribute that to my familiarity with the text. Since Searle likes GEDANKEN experiments, consider the case of, say, a ten-year-old American child, who "obviously" (to Searle at least) understands Engligh. How would he react to these two sentences?)