Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!edsews!edsdrd!gss From: gss@edsdrd.eds.com (Gary Schiltz) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument Summary: Another interesting anecdote ... Keywords: Understanding, Comprehension, Learning Message-ID: <125@arcturus.edsdrd.eds.com> Date: 22 Feb 89 18:13:08 GMT References: <4298@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <45126@linus.UUCP> Organization: EDS Research and Development, Auburn Hills, MI 48057 Lines: 60 In article <45126@linus.UUCP>, bwk@mbunix.mitre.org (Barry W. Kort) writes: > > In _Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman_, Richard Feynman recounts > an attempt to teach physics in Brazil. The students had become > very adept at formal symbol manipulation. They could regurgitate > the definitions and formulas, but they had no idea that the symbols > actually referred to anything in the outside world! > My own similar first hand (and somewhat embarrassing to admit) experience: After I started college as an undergraduate in the mid 1970's, I took my first calculus course. Coming from a small high school in a small town, my math skills were minimal (a year or so of algebra), so the whole course was very confusing. In all the time I was in the course, I never did understand what calculus was all about. However, I did know, for example, that a derivative was "the equation you get when you manipulate another equation in such and such a way" and an integral was "the equation you get when you manipulate the equation in another way." I even had a fair amount of heuristic knowledge about how to solve word problems. "Hmm, that problem [on the exam] looks like the one we did in class. Let's see, first you take the derivative of this and plug in these numbers and solve for this variable, and then you circle the answer (and even if the answer is wrong, at least I can get partial credit for showing my work, and if everyone else is as confused as I am and they don't score well and the exam is graded on a curve, maybe I can pass)." I seemed to be able to do fairly good mapping of one problem to another based on its surface structure. Well, I did pass the course (now I'm ashamed that I didn't do what was necessary to understand what was going on, but like a lot of 17 year olds, I just took the easiest way). I later repeated the course and understood what I was doing (and made a lot better grade). Anyway, from my gut level feeling (quite possibly useless, I admit) about what understanding is all about, I really feel I had no understranding of calculus during that semester. Just as the Brazilian students didn't realize that symbols in physics equations actually referred to things in the outside world, I didn't know that the calculus was modelling anything. I truly had no idea that derivatives had anything to do with rate of change, for example. But, from the outside, it must have appeared that I had at least some understanding of calculus; at least I was good enough at manipulating equations to make the instructors think so. This really makes me wonder whether it can be determined whether or any system understands, simply from external behavior. I'm not trying to reach any conclusions about understanding, as I've not studied nor thought about it much. But, I thought it might be more food for thought. -- /\ What cheer, /\ | Gary Schiltz, EDS R&D, 3551 Hamlin Road | / o< cheer,