Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!aipna!rjc From: rjc@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument Message-ID: <573@aipna.ed.ac.uk> Date: 22 Feb 89 02:50:13 GMT References: <4298@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <51157@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> Reply-To: rjc@uk.ac.ed.aipna (Richard Caley) Organization: Dept. of AI, Edinburgh, UK Lines: 39 Dragon: Mnemouth In article harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Stevan Harnad) writes: >There is no reason whatever (apart from the >preconceptions that Searle's Argument was formulated to invalidate) (a) >not to believe him or (b) to believe that there is "someone/something" >else in the Chinese Room that IS understanding Chinese in the same >sense that you or I or Searle understand English. (a) is fine. (b) is, surely, a straw man. It is the homoculous argument again. Nobody is claiming there is "something else" in the room which understands chinese. There are two cases either 1) If something understands chinese then some sub part of it understands chinese. 2) not (1) Now the first is an infinite regress. If (1) is the case then nothing ( and noone ) can understand chinese. So it must be possible for something to "understand chinese" ( in our intuative sence ) without any sub part of it understanding. Hence (b) may not be the case, even allowing for a chinese understanding room. From this we can say that there are two extra cases in your above quoted argument c) There can be no such room. d) The room can understand chinese without any subpart ( searle pencil, paper, book of rules ) understanding. (c) is what searle is trying to prove, to do this he must disprove all other cases. He doesn't, as far as I can see eliminate (d). -- rjc@uk.ac.ed.aipna " Only love denies the second law of thermodynamics " - Jerry Cornelius