Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!ncar!gatech!rutgers!elbereth.rutgers.edu!harnad From: harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Stevan Harnad) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Where might CR understanding come from (if it exists) Summary: Symbol Logic 101 (Make-up) Message-ID: Date: 18 Mar 89 14:59:20 GMT References: <7847@polya.Stanford.EDU> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 58 SYMBOL LOGIC 101 (MAKEUP) geddis@polya.Stanford.EDU (Donald F. Geddis) of Organization: Stanford University " The program MACSYMA running on a particular computer has the attribute " CAN-SOLVE-SYMBOLIC-CALCULUS-EQUATIONS (CSSCE attribute). Now, give me a " copy of the source code for MACSYMA and I'll hand-simulate it. " " Now the system (Me + Source Code) can solve all sorts of complex equations " that I alone can't. However, I do have the capacity to have the CSSCE " attribute, I just don't happen to have it at this moment. " " So there's an example where a system has attributes that a part can have, " but does not have. I'll rephrase it cryptically, since it's all been said longhand, in vain, so many times before: (1) It is not in dispute that systems can have attributes that their parts do not have. What is in dispute is what systems, what parts, what attributes. (2) It is not in dispute that Searle has the capacity to understand Chinese. He just does not happen to understand it at the moment. (3) There is no basis whatever (I HOPE everyone agrees) for projecting Searle's undisputed actual capacity for understanding English now, and potential for understanding Chinese in the future, onto anything at all, part or whole. I hope everyone sees THAT's just double-talk... (4) The attribute of being able to solve equations is not the same as the attribute of understanding. (5) Neither is the attribute of being able to manipulate Chinese symbols (even under the counterfactual hypothesis that one can manipulate them well enough to pass the LTT) the same as the attribute of being able to understand Chinese symbols. Why (for those who thought it might have been)? One reason is Searle's Chinese Room Argument. (Here and in my papers I've given several others, including the "symbol-grounding problem.") (6) What is the simple conclusion of this simple argument that someone who has understood it must draw -- unless he has a valid counterargument (or has become unalterably soft-wired to the simple-minded belief that thinking is just symbol crunching)? That thinking is not just symbol crunching. Q.E.D. (R.I.P.) Refs: Searle, J. (1980) Minds, Brains and Programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3: 417-457 Harnad, S. (1989) Minds, Machines and Searle. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 1: 5 - 25. -- Stevan Harnad INTERNET: harnad@confidence.princeton.edu harnad@princeton.edu srh@flash.bellcore.com harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu harnad@princeton.uucp BITNET: harnad@pucc.bitnet CSNET: harnad%princeton.edu@relay.cs.net (609)-921-7771