Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!pasteur!ames!elroy!gryphon!sarima
From: sarima@gryphon.COM (Stan Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Chinese Room argument
Message-ID: <13143@gryphon.COM>
Date: 10 Mar 89 21:37:04 GMT
References: <2125@star.cs.vu.nl>
Reply-To: sarima@gryphon.COM (Stan Friesen)
Organization: Trailing Edge Technology, Redondo Beach, CA
Lines: 52

In article <2125@star.cs.vu.nl> roelw@cs.vu.nl () writes:
>
>> In general, it only makes sense to talk about the programmer "changing the
>> denotation of a symbol in a program" when that change produces corresponding
>> changes it the program's output behavior, i.e. "changing the denotation of
>> symbol 'xyz' from 'hide behind the nearest rock' to 'cover yourself with
>> barbacue sauce and jump up and down and yell'" only makes sense if the
>> generation of the symbol "xyz" in the program produces the corresponding
>> difference in behavior. 
>
>No. Read any textbook on formal languages or logic and you will find a clean
>separation between the syntax and semantics of a language. Whether we can make
>sense of the output of a symbol-manipulation process is completely irrelevant
>to the rules of symbol-manipulation.
>
	Indeed, and I consider this to be one of the most serious deficiencies
of standard linguistic theory.  I do not believe an adequate, complete theory
of natural linguistic competence is possible without dealing with the inter-
action between "semantics" and "syntax".  It is clear, to a historian, that
the seperation was originally instituted to break an intractable problem up
into simpler components.  Now, tradition has elevated this pragmatic split
into a "fact" of linguistics.  As far as "formal" languages  are concerned,
they have almost no applicability to natural language processing, since
they are based on math rather than natural language.
	Changing the "denotation" of a linguistic symbol changes the conditions
under which it is acceptable in normal discourse.  After all if I said
"I put on my desk and went to an idea" you would say I was talking nonense.
Yet, if I have redifined "desk" to mean "coat" and "idea" to mean "concert"
it is perfectly legitimate!  Thus in "simulating" a competent speaker a
Chinese Room *must* deal with denotation in its rules of operation or it
is moste certainly *not* going to fool any real Chinese.

>
>The output of a symbol-manipulation process is a string of symbols. Let's call
>this O. The denotation of the string is given by 1. the denotation of the 
>symbols in it and 2. rules for constructing the denotation of a well-formed 
>string from those of its components. Let's call these rules D. Your 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.

	True in a *formal* sense, but whether O is considered acceptible as
a natural language string by a native speaker *does* depend on (O, D), and
this is what the Chinese Room is supposed to be capable of.  Thus, the the
rules must only produce strings, O,  which have acceptable mappings to
denotations, D.  And any change in the set of denotations changes the rules
needed for determining acceptable pairs.
-- 
Sarima Cardolandion			sarima@gryphon.CTS.COM
aka Stanley Friesen			rutgers!marque!gryphon!sarima
					Sherman Oaks, CA