Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!rutgers!paul.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!elbereth.rutgers.edu!harnad From: harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Stevan Harnad) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument Summary: On Understanding Searle On Understanding Message-ID: Date: 18 Feb 89 22:26:18 GMT References: <4298@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 48 kck@g.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Karl Kluge) of Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI wrote: " Ah, but it is a word game... 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. Ah me. Is it really so difficult to see that in the above you have simply presupposed the conclusion you were trying to demonstrate? Before we buy into any dogmas, it is a fact that Searle has a mind, but definitely NOT a fact that "Fu Bar" has a mind. OF COURSE if we could simply presuppose that Fu Bar had a mind, or "define" it as having a mind, everything would come out just as you would like. But that's not just a word game: It's circular. " Suppose that Searle underwent some traumatic experience that led to his " suffering from multiple personality disorder... Irrelevant again. That Searle has a mind (at least one) is not in doubt. That the symbol-manipulator does is. That Searle might have had more minds, one English and the other Chinese, is perhaps possible, but he probably doesn't; and even if he did, it's irrelevant. -- Or do you really believe that simply going through the motions of what he does in the Chinese room would be "traumatic" enough to induce multiple personality disorder (plus glossolalia in Chinese)? Yet even THAT would be irrelevant, because you have not shown that his computer counterpart had a mind in the first place, to be similarly traumatized. All of this is certainly word games and sci-fi fantasy, to which any argument, correct or incorrect, deep or shallow, simple or complex, can be reduced. Searle's argument is simple but deep. Its simplicity has led a lot of people who have not understood the deeper point it is making into irrelevancies of their own creation. To show it to be incorrect you must first understand it. " I'm very serious about this, I really don't understand the point Searle " believes he is making... You can say that again... -- 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