Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!polya!geddis From: geddis@polya.Stanford.EDU (Donald F. Geddis) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument Keywords: Understanding, Comprehension, Learning Message-ID: <7220@polya.Stanford.EDU> Date: 26 Feb 89 05:34:55 GMT References: <4298@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <45126@linus.UUCP> <125@arcturus.edsdrd.eds.com> <45213@linus.UUCP> Reply-To: geddis@polya.Stanford.EDU (Donald F. Geddis) Organization: Stanford University Lines: 37 In article <45213@linus.UUCP> bwk@mbunix.mitre.org (Barry Kort) writes: >In article <125@arcturus.edsdrd.eds.com> gss@edsdrd.eds.com (Gary Schiltz) >recounts his personal experience in "doing calculus" at age 17 >without really understanding what it was all about. Gary concludes: > > This really makes me wonder whether it can be determined whether any > > system understands, simply from external behavior. >In Feynman's anecdote about the Brazilian physics students, he easily >uncovered their lack of understanding when he asked them questions >about the real-world phenomena which the physics lessons covered. >Their blank stares revealed that they had made no connections between >everyday experiences and the subject at hand. F = ma had nothing to >do with getting up to speed on a bicycle. Ft = mv had nothing to do >with a hitting a baseball. You wonder whether external behavior can tell you if the system understands. And yet in both these cases, the "proof" that the system (person) did not understand was simply external behavior. In calculus, the hardest questions were answered incorrectly. Gary said that his grade went up when he retook the class and "understood". And he even stated an example: The connection between a derivative and rates of change. It seems rather trivial to "externally" test this one with a single question. In Feynman's Brazil experience, he seemed to have little difficulty telling that his student's level of understanding was relatively shallow. Most questions that were not simple restatements of memorized phrases showed a lot of difficulty. Just because it requires careful probing and the examiner can be fooled, doesn't mean that "external behavior" is not the proper criteria for deciding when a system understands. Just what, exactly, is being proposed as an alternative test? -- Don -- Geddis@Polya.Stanford.Edu "We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control." - Pink Floyd