Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!sharkey!atanasoff!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!rutgers!elbereth.rutgers.edu!harnad From: harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Stevan Harnad) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: letter to THE NEW YORK REVIEW concerning AI Summary: Understanding: Its subjective and objective manifestations Keywords: Searle, Chinese room, Minsky Message-ID: Date: 18 Feb 89 21:41:44 GMT References: <7471@venera.isi.edu> <4297@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 64 tsf@PROOF.ERGO.CS.CMU.EDU (Timothy Freeman) of Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI wrote: " Seems like X [what it's like to understand vs. not understand a given " language] is a label for a subjective phenomenon... [But] people are " able to respond to sequences of words sometimes without having "X" (in " hypnosis or experiments with subliminal messages, for instance)... " [Moreover,] 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). (1) Yes, understanding has subjective as well as objective manifestations. (2) These tend to swing together, but as a basis for having a mind (in cases of doubt, like stones, thermostats, machines, and in fact any body other than one's own), subjective understanding is surely primary. (3) The instances you describe of a dissociation between subjective understanding and its objective manifestations (i.e., cases in which they DON'T swing together) in OURSELVES (in whom the overall presence of understanding [or a mind] itself is NOT in doubt) are simply NOT RELEVANT to cases other than ourselves (in which it is whether or not they understand [or have a mind] at all that is at issue.) First show that your candidate has understanding (or a mind) at all; until then, projecting our own phenomenology onto it is not supportive: It's circular. (4) It is indeed the subjective manifestation of understanding Chinese that Searle is denying of himself, as well as the computer, in his Chinese Room Argument: That's all. (He is also ASSUMING, for the sake of argument, that all objective manifestations of understanding could be successfully achieved through symbol manipulation alone, as "Strong AI" supposes; that assumption, of course, may well be wrong [because of the symbol grounding problem, as I argue in my own paper], but that's a different issue.) " 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. The subjective sensation may indeed be totally useless (though it certainly doesn't SEEM that way), but nevertheless it is the only thing distinguishing us from a mindless automaton, and its presence or absence is precisely what's at issue in The Chinese Room Argument. That's why I keep patiently reminding enthusiasts that this is not a "definitional" issue at all, i.e., it does not depend on what I "want `understanding' to mean"! Otherwise we could simply "define" understanding as "behaving as if one understands" and that would be all there was to it! Searle's argument is specifically designed to remind us (or at least those of us who are not so committed to a "definition" as to have forgotten what it was all about to have a mind before the wishful thinking metastasized) that -- at least for the teletype version of the turing test -- "as if" can't be the real thing! -- Stevan Harnad INTERNET: harnad@confidence.princeton.edu harnad@princeton.edu srh@flash.bellcore.com harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu harnad@princeton.uucp BITNET: harnad@pucc.bitnet CSNET: harnad%princeton.edu@relay.cs.net (609)-921-7771