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From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Understanding involves Learning?
Message-ID: <3632@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 1 Apr 89 17:57:30 GMT
References: <319@edai.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 23

From article <319@edai.ed.ac.uk>, by cam@edai.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.edai   031 667 1011 x2550):
" There has been a lot of discussion lately about the Chinese Room, and
" whether purely syntactic processes could understand, or even appear to
" understand.

You've made too much sense of the discussion.  It's conceded for the
sake of the CR argument that the processes do appear to understand.
The CR does pass the Turing Test and so does possess convincing
linguistic competence.

" My question is this. Does convincing linguistic competence involve
" learning? ...

Sure.  You make a very good point here.

" Sooner or later a
" conversational robot which couldn't learn new ideas would be suspected
" of being a metal-head.

Yes.  This suspicion has been raised about certain participants
in this discussion.

		Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu