Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!botter!star.cs.vu.nl!hansw
From: hansw@cs.vu.nl (Hans Weigand)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Chinese room argument
Keywords: knowing, agreeing
Message-ID: <2190@hansw.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 21 Mar 89 08:46:40 GMT
References: <2185@star.cs.vu.nl>
Reply-To: hansw@cs.vu.nl (Weigand Hans)
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 19

In article <2185@star.cs.vu.nl> roelw@cs.vu.nl () writes:

>What you (KK) confuse is knowing a denotation of a symbol and agreeing with other
>people about what the denotation of the symbol is (during the discourse).

I agree (know?) that knowing (the denotation of ) a symbol is not the 
same as agreeing with other people about it. But there is an important 
overlap: you cannot know (the denotation of) a symbol without
agreeing with others (witness Wittgenstein). The reverse is not true: 
two communicating processes can agree on a certain message format without 
knowing the denotation subjectively.

SCIRE TUUM NIHIL EST NISI TE SCIRE HOC SCIAT ALTER (Persius)
(your knowing is void if the other does not not know that you know it)

-
Hans Weigand
Dept of Mathematics and Computer Science
Free University, Amsterdam