Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsd!nosc!humu!uhccux!lee
From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument
Message-ID: <3381@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 4 Mar 89 19:12:34 GMT
References: <330@esosun.UUCP>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 41

From article <330@esosun.UUCP>, by jackson@freyja.css.gov (Jerry Jackson):
" ...
" Now, because I'm a glutton for punishment... Does anyone really think
" someone can be wrong about whether or not they are in pain?  Wouldn't
" it seem really odd to respond to the statement: "I just stubbed my toe
" and boy does it hurt!" with: "No it doesn't." It is in this sense that
	No it doesn't ... did you forget about the amputation, Jerry?
" Mr. Harnad intends you take the statement "I understand."  You might ...

It helps to keep separate issues separate.  There's the pecularity of
subjective experience and related linguistic peculiarities:  for
instance, there *is* evidence that 'I think' is different from 'he
thinks'.  And there is finding a distinction between two senses of
'understand' and making one.  I contended that although you can make one
(of course), you can't find one.  It's worth keeping straight about
that, because substantial conclusions can't follow from mere
definitions.

And then there's Harnad's attempted defense of Searle which exploits the
supposed distinction between two senses of understand.  That defense
proceeds by positing that I don't understand Chinese (true), writing a
few paragraphs during which the reader is distracted enough to forget
the supposed distinction, and concluding that "of course" the CR doesn't
understand Chinese.  If you remember the distinction, though, you see
that in the posited sense, the conclusion follows only from the fact
that I am not the CR (even if I'm in it), and for that matter no one in
the wide world understands Chinese, in *this* sense of understand.
So it's just a sophistry.  Other participants in the discussion
have pointed this out.

And then there's Searle's argument itself.

I can accept a distinction between subjective and objective (which I do)
without accepting that there is such a distinction to be *found* in the
*particular* case of 'understand', though I can still accept *making*
such a distinction.  Independently of that question I could have
accepted Harnad's argument consistently, if I had not noticed his
equivocation.  In spite of Harnad's illogic, I might still be able to
accept Searle's argument (though I don't).

		Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu