Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!ncar!boulder!pikes!udenva!isis!nbires!matt From: matt@nbires.nbi.com (Matthew Meighan) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument Message-ID: <230@nbires.nbi.com> Date: 23 Feb 89 20:18:40 GMT References: <4298@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <8174@netnews.upenn.edu> <764@htsa.uucp> <7586@venera.isi.edu> Reply-To: matt@nbires.UUCP (Matthew Meighan) Organization: NBI Inc, Boulder CO Lines: 27 In article <7586@venera.isi.edu> smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar) writes: > . . . An argument which is based on assertions > of what it "obvious" to introspection is no argument at all Can you prove this, or is it just obvious to you? It seems to me that the assertion that only objectively-provable things are "true" is a totally subjective one, hence false by its own criteria. What evidence is there for this belief? >(Incidentally, I believe >it was Harry Truman who coined a phrase to describe an argument which is >supported by nothing more than an over-abundance of verbiage; he called >it "The Big Lie.") This falsely equates subjective experience with "nothing more than an over-abundance of verbiage." The two are not equivalent. Subjective experience, or perception, is certainly "more than verbiage." Anyway, I doubt very much that Truman was referring to anything remotely like the Chinese Room argument when he coined this phrase. -- Matt Meighan matt@nbires.nbi.com (nbires\!matt)