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From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Chinese Room argument
Message-ID: <3399@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 7 Mar 89 17:58:44 GMT
References: <2125@star.cs.vu.nl>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 36

From article <2125@star.cs.vu.nl>, by roelw@cs.vu.nl:
" Let's call these rules D. Your [Greg's] proposal
" is to call the pair (O, D) the outcome of the process. Obviously, this is not
" indendent of D. However, O *is* indendent from D; it depends only on 1. the
" string of input symbols 2. the rules for manipulating those symbols, and these
" in turn are independent from D.

Yes, that's what I meant, though it's an odd way to put it (since
the denotational rules haven't been applied).  But the point is
that that's the appropriate view to take of the outcome -- in
terms of it's denotation.  Look, instead of thinking about
varying the denotations of given symbols, think about varying
the symbols with given denotations.  That doesn't make any
difference to the computation, either.  We need to judge the
appropriateness of a computation.  If you're a TM, I can't see
inside you to examine your symbols, and I don't think I'd want
to.  In responding to you, I can only be concerned with the
meaning of your behavior (as I take the meaning to be).

" mike@arizona.edu (Mike Coffin) writes in <2121@star.cs.vu.nl>:
" > What makes you think that a program sophisticated enough to answer
" > questions in Chinese is going to represent a chair or a table as a
" > single symbol?  
" 
" Well, nothing makes me think that. I wrote:
" 
"  "The denotation of the symbols, and of expressions built from these symbols,
"   is not relevant for the outcome of the TM computation."

For a given TM, and in a certain sense of 'relevant', I guess
that's so.  But suppose I exchanged the denotations of your
(complex of) symbols for 'red' and 'green'.  You might have
a traffic accident.  Isn't that relevant?  Your computations
wouldn't change, but their appropriateness would.

		Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu