Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!noao!arizona!mike From: mike@arizona.edu (Mike Coffin) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument Message-ID: <9546@megaron.arizona.edu> Date: 3 Mar 89 18:26:32 GMT References: Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson Lines: 18 From article (Stevan Harnad): > Searle is in the room, doing everything the computer does, but > understanding no Chinese. Therefore the computer understands no > Chinese (or anything at all) when it's doing the very same thing. So what? No one said that a bare stored-program computer, without benefit of algorithms, can understand Chinese. And no one says that the algorithm, in book form, understands Chinese. Does this prove that the combination of the two can't understand anything? Why? To me, this little lemma seems to be the the crux of the whole "proof." I haven't seen it addressed yet, much less demonstrated. You DO need to show this! There is ample evidence that a computer running an algorithm can have properties that neither the computer (without algorithm) nor the algorithm (without computer) have. -- Mike Coffin mike@arizona.edu Univ. of Ariz. Dept. of Comp. Sci. {allegra,cmcl2}!arizona!mike Tucson, AZ 85721 (602)621-2858