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: <336@skye.ed.ac.uk> Date: 16 Mar 89 19:03:30 GMT References: <4298@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <9770@ihlpb.ATT.COM> <7409@polya.Stanford.EDU> Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland Lines: 25 In article <7409@polya.Stanford.EDU> geddis@polya.Stanford.EDU (Donald F. Geddis) writes: >In article harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Stevan Harnad) writes: >>And he's all there is to the "system." >Completely, 100%, false. Wrong. Incorrect. The Chinese Room contains >Searle AND THE RULES. And the system as a whole DOES understand, as >evidenced by the Chinese answers to Chinese questions. Maybe the room does understand. We might argue whether its behavior is sufficient to show that it understands. I would say that the behavior is not sufficient. But it is not necessary to show that the Room understands in order to refute Searle. All that is required is to show that Searle has failed to show that the Room does not understand. He has failed because -- as all the variants of the systems reply point out -- Searle's lack of understanding is no more than saying that any understanding that may be there is inaccessible to Searle. And of course it's inaccessible. Searle can see only the low-level operations. He can observe all the details, and can discover larger structures of organization, but basically he's in the same position we are when we look at the operations of brains. He can't expect to immediately see if understanding is taking place. (If ineed that's something one might see at all.)