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From: oliphant@dvinci.USask.CA (Mike Oliphant)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Chinese room
Message-ID: <1806@dvinci.USask.CA>
Date: 3 Mar 89 20:13:11 GMT
Organization: University of Saskatchewan
Lines: 43


I'm currently taking a first year philosophy class in which
the topic of Searle's Chinese room argument came up.  Here are
my thoughts on the matter:

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we accept Searle's Chinese
room example as begin possible - i.e. that it is possible for a
machine to appear to external examination to understand when in reality
it does not understand.  This implies that we could have two machines
that react to their environment in exactly the same way, but one does
so with understanding while the other does not.  Now we must ask the
question "Just what can it be that the 'understanding' machine possesses
that makes it different?".  Since these two machines behave in exactly
the same manner, this difference cannot cause any external effects.

This causes a problem, as it is not consistent with my concept of
understanding that it has no external effects.  This problem becomes
more apparent when we ask the question "Why do I believe in something
called 'understanding'?".  It seems to me that most people believe in
'understanding' due to their own introspection.  We believe in understanding
and we argue about the nature of understanding because we have this
internal experience that we call understanding.  If this is the case,
hasn't this phenomenon of understanding caused something external?  Hasn't
it caused me to ponder this subject and write this message?  I believe
it has.

So, what possible conclusions can we draw from this?  What I conclude
is that it is not possible to have two machines that display
identical behaviour while one possesses 'understanding' (in the
intuitive sense of the word) while the other does not.  Understanding
is an integral part of behaviour and if you duplicate the behaviour
you also duplicate the phenomenon we call understanding.
Of course, this conclusion is still based upon the assumption that the
Chinese room scenario is plausible.  Many will argue that it is not
possible to construct a machine that even simulates understanding,
but that is a separate (but very important) issue.


There are undoubtedly flaws in my reasoning.  I encourage any
comments/criticism so that I can locate them and (hopefully)
patch them up.

			-Mike Oliphant