Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!bingvaxu!sunybcs!sher From: sher@sunybcs.uucp (David Sher) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument Message-ID: <4296@cs.Buffalo.EDU> Date: 20 Feb 89 00:45:59 GMT References: <4298@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <51123@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> Sender: nobody@cs.Buffalo.EDU Reply-To: sher@wolf.UUCP (David Sher) Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science Lines: 13 Now that we've posted megawords on "understanding" and whether a machine can or can not posses it, can I ask: what is the advantage of a machine with "understanding"? Assume that HAL doesn't understand anything. He merely manipulates symbols so that he creates an illusion of understanding in his correspondents. In what way does that inhibit HAL as a useful tool. What could an "understanding" machine that a merely intelligent (the symbol manipulator that merely gets the right answer) machine could not? Unless someone can show me an advantage to it I'm not going to waste much time designing it into my programs. -David Sher ARPA: sher@cs.buffalo.edu BITNET: sher@sunybcs UUCP: {rutgers,ames,boulder,decvax}!sunybcs!sher