Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bbn!oberon!orion.cf.uci.edu!elroy!gryphon!sarima From: sarima@gryphon.COM (Stan Friesen) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument Message-ID: <12771@gryphon.COM> Date: 1 Mar 89 21:21:49 GMT References: <4298@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Reply-To: sarima@gryphon.COM (Stan Friesen) Organization: Trailing Edge Technology, Redondo Beach, CA Lines: 22 In article <4307@cs.Buffalo.EDU> sher@wolf.UUCP (David Sher) writes: > >I probably blew it, being far from an expert in rhetoric, but this seems >to be the nub of the problem. Does anyone believe that they can build a >machine with a soul? It is just as easy to build in Searle's "understanding." > Yes, I do. Of course this is at least partly because the Jewish rather than the Greek definition of soul! By the way, I also believe that the Chinese Room as specified by Serle is impossible. I do not beleive that a fully native competence in a language may be achieved by pure symbol manipulation using predefined rules. A certain amount of world knowledge and "common sense" must also be applied. I base this in part on my experience translating technical Russian using only a dictionary and a skeleton grammar. I could not have done it without "understanding" the Russian as I went, thus I would have been at a loss trying to translate a book on something I did not know anything about. -- Sarima Cardolandion sarima@gryphon.CTS.COM aka Stanley Friesen rutgers!marque!gryphon!sarima Sherman Oaks, CA