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: Question on Chinese Room Argument Summary: Chalk-Pushing/Symbol-Crunching Vs. Nonsymbolic Function Keywords: Understanding, Comprehension, Learning Message-ID: Date: 7 Mar 89 04:26:27 GMT References: <4298@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <9787@ihlpb.ATT.COM> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 33 arm@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Macalalad) of AT&T Bell Laboratories wrote: " the only point you didn't comment on was the argument that neurons seem " to be the "chalk-pushers" of the brain, yet they individually don't " seem to have understanding... Instead of having just one person " in the Chinese room, let's have a lot of people, comparable to the " number of neurons in the brain. All of them are busy doing calculations " on the chalkboard and passing pieces of paper around, all in strict " adherence to their rulebooks. And the output, of course, is fluent " Chinese. Is it so clear now which one in the Chinese room should " understand Chinese? To me there is only one thing that sounds more unlikely than the notion that the LTT could be passed by symbol-crunching alone, and that is the notion that all neurons do is crunch symbols. But that's certainly one way of supporting the proposition that symbol-crunchers can understand. It's called argument by assumption (i.e., it's the same circular reasoning we keep encountering over and over on this topic). For the record, the only reason the real brain is immune to Searle's Argument is that neurons are NOT just "chalk-pushers." Refs: Searle, J. (1980) Minds, Brains and Programs. 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