Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsd!nosc!humu!uhccux!lee
From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Chinese room argument
Message-ID: <3432@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 10 Mar 89 12:53:54 GMT
References: <2139@star.cs.vu.nl>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 36

From article <2139@star.cs.vu.nl>, by roelw@cs.vu.nl:
"...
"2. Put the UTM in a box equiped with video cameras, wheels and a motor
"and let it drive in the street.  Again there is no difference to its
"computation if you interpret "green" as red etc.  (You may put any other
"symbol-manipulating device in a box with the same result.)
"
"The general result is that a symbol-manipulating device is not affected
"by the denotation you or anyone else give to the symbols it manipulates.

Correct that there is no difference to the computation.  Incorrect
that the device is unaffected.  It interacts with the world.  Traffic
light changes to red -- UTM interprets this as 'green', proceeds
across intersection.  Crash.

"Of course, it is a different matter if the programmer wrote "green"
"where s/he should have written "red".  The robot will probably cause a
"traffic accident by that.

Not different -- same.  I begin to wonder if we mean the same thing by the
term 'denotation'.

"3. Talk with someone, using the word "green" to mean red and "red" to
"mean green, without the other person's knowing about this change in
"denotation.  S/he quickly will find something weird about your ...
"
"What this shows, I think, is that the denotation of public symbols is publicly
"known and that if you make a private change in what is conventionally denoted 
"by a symbol, you will get social problems. Conventions about what the 
"denotations of symbols are, are not (merely) in the head of one individual but
"are social institutions. 

Precisely.  So you do understand.  But the robot is somehow different
from persons in this regard ??

		Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu