Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!labrea!polya!geddis From: geddis@polya.Stanford.EDU (Donald F. Geddis) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument Message-ID: <7483@polya.Stanford.EDU> Date: 7 Mar 89 09:07:44 GMT References: <4298@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <7431@polya.Stanford.EDU> Reply-To: geddis@polya.Stanford.EDU (Donald F. Geddis) Organization: Stanford University Lines: 20 In article harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Stevan Harnad) writes: >As far as I know, only Joe Bogen's knife >has had such dramatic effects (in the "split-brain" patients -- and >possibly also early traumatic child abuse in patients suffering >from multiple personality syndome). It is not really fair to compare the potential for two minds within Searle (after he memorizes all the rules in the Chinese Room) to current-day reality. For that, complexity arguments *are* important: the size of the rule set would be orders of magnitude beyond what a human being could potentially memorize, much less utilize effectively. So if we're going to let Searle hypothetically memorize the rules, we can't outlaw the possibility that there are now two minds in his body (the old Searle, as well as the new Searle + Rules) by looking at modern medical experiments. -- Don -- Geddis@Polya.Stanford.Edu "We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control." - Pink Floyd