Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ig!arizona!mike From: mike@arizona.edu (Mike Coffin) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room argument Message-ID: <9639@megaron.arizona.edu> Date: 9 Mar 89 20:49:39 GMT References: Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson Lines: 39 Stevan Harnad writes, in part > All you are doing here is restating the premise of the LTT. Searle's > Argument shows what untoward conclusions arise from accepting the > premise that the LTT could be successfully passed by symbol-crunching > alone. Sometimes the best way to deal with an untoward conclusion > is to revise your premises. The people who are arguing till they are > black and blue that "rules understand" or "chalk understands" or > "Searle's brain has another mind that understands" would do better > to stop straining at it and simply confront the possibility that > it is not possible to pass the LTT by symbol crunching alone! I think you misunderstand our state of mind. ;-) You seem to think that, realizing our position well-nigh untenable, we are desperately inventing ever-more-bizarre rationalizations for our preconceived ideas. Of course, I can't speak for others, but I am not "straining" in the slightest. I see no untoward, or even unexpected, conclusion! The systems reply seems the most natural thing in the world to me --- and I don't even have a Yale education. Life is absolutely FULL of situations where large aggregates of simple objects don't act simply. It is the most natural thing in the world to expect the whole to be greater than the sum of the parts. It is "common sense." In fact, it would be surprising if a large aggregate didn't have "a life of its own." I learned very early --- probably while watching my father take apart, clean, and reassemble clocks and watches --- that if you take apart complicated things you expect to find simpler things, and if you put a lot of simple things together, you get complicated things. Playing with tinker-toys, erector sets, microscopes, physics, and computers all reinforced this sense. Am I alone in this sense that the whole is generally greater than the sum of its parts? -- Mike Coffin mike@arizona.edu Univ. of Ariz. Dept. of Comp. Sci. {allegra,cmcl2}!arizona!mike Tucson, AZ 85721 (602)621-2858