Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!aiai!jeff
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument
Keywords: Understanding, Comprehension, Learning
Message-ID: <335@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 16 Mar 89 18:49:20 GMT
References: <4298@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <Feb.18.17.26.17.1989.23438@elbereth.rutgers.edu> <9770@ihlpb.ATT.COM> <Mar.2.23.56.36.1989.28884@elbereth.rutgers.edu>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 14

In article <Mar.2.23.56.36.1989.28884@elbereth.rutgers.edu> harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Stevan Harnad) writes:
>Searle's Argument is there to show us that that's just not good enough,
>because he can pass the LTT for Chinese without understanding Chinese.
>And he's all there is to the "system."

Just because Searle is "all there is" does not mean he has the
necessary access to everything his brain is doing.  Searle has
no way of knowing what, if anything, is experienced by the entity
<Searle executing rules>.  For all he knows, it amounts to a
separate, albeit presumably slower, consciousness elsewhere
"in his head".

Sure, maybe, this other entity does not understand.  But Searle has
not shown that it does not understand.