Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!elbereth.rutgers.edu!harnad From: harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Stevan Harnad) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument Summary: Confusion About Other Minds Message-ID: Date: 21 Feb 89 01:51:32 GMT References: <3301@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 47 lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) of University of Hawaii writes: " You know that the other-minds issue is unresolvable, yet you suppose " that you have resolved it when you premise your remarks on Searle (and " others) having a mind. Someone is confused. There IS an ordinary, everyday practical "solution" to the other-minds problem, and that is what motivates my "Total Turing Test" (TTT): If you can't tell the candidate apart from a person in any respect, in terms of either its robotic or its linguistic performance capacity, then you have no better or worse grounds for assuming it has a mind than you have with any other person but yourself. Now that's only a practical "solution," not a real solution or a guarantee. I'm certainly willing to give Searle the benefit of the doubt here, because he can pass the TTT, whereas the (hypothetical) symbol manipulator can only pass the linguistic version. But all of that is irrelevant anyway, because in the Chinese Room there is first-person evidence available that there's NO Chinese understanding going on in there -- exactly the same kind of first-person evidence that makes one candidate (and one only) exempt from the other-minds problem, namely, oneself: For you or I could do Searle's simulation ourselves, and still not understand Chinese. We don't need Searle; nor do we have to make any assumptions about his having a mind! Again, this is no guarantee; after all, someone ELSE in there could be understanding, or even confused: The walls could have not only ears, but a soul. There are, after all, two extreme conclusions one could draw from the other-minds problem (both erroneous and far-fetched, in my view): One is that because you can't confirm it for sure, therefore NO ONE BUT YOU in fact has a mind. The other is that because you can't disconfirm it for sure, EVERY THING [animate and inanimate, great and small, part and whole) has a mind. I think neither of these conclusions is satisfactory, and certainly neither follows as a matter of necessity from the existence of the other-minds problem. A third (and I think reasonable) conclusion from the other-minds problem is to reserve the benefit of the doubt to candidates, like ourselves, who pass the TTT. Not so confusing, I think... -- 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