Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hpl-opus!hplchm!curry
From: curry@hplchm.HP.COM (Bo Curry)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Re: Eliza and the Question on Chinese Room Argument
Message-ID: <280003@hplchm.HP.COM>
Date: 6 Mar 89 20:40:43 GMT
References: <4395@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Organization: HP Labs Chemical Systems Dept, Palo Alto
Lines: 81

>/ hplchm:comp.ai / geddis@polya.Stanford.EDU (Donald F. Geddis) / 12:47 am  Mar  4, 1989 /
>True enough, but then you are defining the "computer" to be the dumb processor
>that interprets the rules.  No one claimed that the processor (by itself)
>*did* understand.  I still haven't heard a satisfactory rebuttal to the
>"Systems Reply", namely that (Searle + Rules) understands, whereas just
>(Searle) doesn't.  [To use your analogy:  (Computer Processor + Symbolic
>Rules) understands, but just (Computer Processor) doesn't.]
>

OK, let's follow up on this.  Let me see if I can paraphrase Harnad interpreting
Searle:

1.  Searle does not understand Chinese.
    I agree, because *not only* does he so claim, *but also* he fails
    to pass the Chinese TT.  Although neither of these facts alone would
    suffice (since the first would not convince me, and the second would
    fail to convince Harnad), together they prove the case. 

2.  The Room (Searle + rules) passes the TT and *seems* to understand
    Chinese.
    I agree.

3.  However, the Room doesn't *really* understand, since
    "Searle is doing everything [the Room] is doing, and *he* claims
    not to understand" (!).

    I don't see how 3. follows at all from the rest of the argument.
    It obviously has a powerful intuitive appeal to Harnad and others.
    Let me try to show how intuition is misleading these deep thinkers.

    The foundation of the intuition that Searle's opinion about
    the Room's understanding is definitive seems to be:

4.  Other than Searle, there is *nothing* in the Room (except for
    blackboard, chalk, and a few slips of paper upon which the
    rules are inscribed).  Since we all know, from our experience,
    that blackboards and slips of paper don't understand anything,
    nothing is left except Searle himself.
    Searle has suggested that even these meager props would be
    unnecessary, since he could *memorize* the rules!

    Now, let's look at this intuitive argument in a bit more detail,
    to test its plausibility.  Perhaps, in his mind's eye, Searle
    sees the rules as consisting of a Chinese dictionary, a Grammar,
    perhaps a Thesaurus and a few syntactic rules of grammar such as
    "Never split an infinitive", or some such.  In any case,
    Searle's (envisioned) set of rules is clearly compact enough that
    he imagines *memorization* of the rules to be possible.  This idea
    (or even the idea that the rules, written on paper, might fit
    into a room) is, I would submit, ludicrous to anyone who has actually
    attempted to design a program to understand natural language.

    Consider what it would require for a Room to be able to pass the TT.
    It must be able to use language well enough to convince a native
    speaker.  It must therefore know the denotations, connotations,
    and normal (physical, cultural, etymological, etc) associations for
    a large subset of Chinese words, phrases, proverbs, etc.  In order
    to carry on a conversation about, say, riots in Tibet, the Room would
    have to understand Tibetan Buddhism, its relationship to Chinese
    Buddhism and to Confucianism, the political and historical
    relations between Tibet and China, and thousands of other facts
    and relationships.  All this knowledge, for thousands of possible
    topics of conversation, must be represented in the rules before
    the Room can hope to satisfy Searle's premise.  I submit
    that this knowledge base is essentially isomorphic to a large part
    of Searle's brain, and that it would be clearly impossible for
    him to "internalize" it (as explicit memorized rules).  Think
    about the size and complexity of these rules.  Will they fit in
    a room?  If punched out on Hollerith cards and laid end to end,
    would they reach from Earth to Sirius?  How many centuries will
    Searle require, while interpreting these rules sequentially, to
    respond to the simplest question posed to the Room in Chinese?

    Once the complexity of the hypothesized rule set is fully grasped,
    it becomes clear that intuitions about the "obvious" lack of
    understanding embodied in "a few slips of paper" are seriously
    misleading.  Admit that this intuition may be mistaken, and Searle's
    (and Harnad's) argument disappears.

    Bo (still waiting for the PC version) Curry
    curry%hplchm@hplabs.HP.COM