Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!elbereth.rutgers.edu!harnad From: harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Stevan Harnad) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Chinese Room argument Summary: On Speed, Complexity and Parallel Processing Message-ID: Date: 5 Mar 89 18:14:36 GMT References: <2121@star.cs.vu.nl> <9557@megaron.arizona.edu> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 35 mike@arizona.edu (Mike Coffin) of U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson writes: " I'm beginning to think that the real trick in Searle's thought " experiment is to get us to provisionally accept the fact that a human " is a fast enough computer to have any hope of simulating another " person... When you break this mind-set, and start thinking about a " parallel processor with 10^12 independent processors, madly calculating " and communicating in extremely complicated patterns, it is not so clear " what it could or couldn't do. (1) The "mind-set" is inherited from symbolic AI ("Strong AI"), which is not committed to parallel processing; that's also what Searle's Argument is directed at. (2) Gesturing to parallel processing is not enough; however, if there is a PRINCIPLED reason why a computation essential for passing the LTT would be impossible to execute serially, then such a model would indeed be immune to Searle's Chinese Room Argument, just as the TTT (with its nonsymbolic transducers and effectors) is, though for less intuitively compelling reasons. (3) Forget about speed and complexity: That's just hand-waving. Refs: Searle J. (1980) Minds, Brains and Progams. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3: 417-457. Harnad S. (1989) Minds, Machines and Searle. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence" 1: 5-25 -- Stevan Harnad INTERNET: harnad@confidence.princeton.edu harnad@princeton.edu srh@flash.bellcore.com harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu harnad@princeton.uucp BITNET: harnad@pucc.bitnet CSNET: harnad%princeton.edu@relay.cs.net (609)-921-7771