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From: crowston@athena.mit.edu (Kevin Crowston)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Can Machines Think?
Keywords: Searle, Chinese Room, Shannon, Churchlands, Scientific American
Message-ID: <1989Dec18.014229.18058@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 18 Dec 89 01:42:29 GMT
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Reply-To: crowston@athena.mit.edu (Kevin Crowston)
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I also read Searle's and the Churchland's articles in Scientific American
and I'm not sure I understand Searle's argument.  Perhaps someone who
does can try to explain once more.

Searle seems to be saying that the Turing Test is meaningless as a test of
understanding because the Chinese Room can pass it, even though the
person in the Chinese Room doesn't understand Chinese.  But it seems to
me that this argument equates the mind and the brain and thus mislocates 
the thing doing the understanding.  I agree that the man in the room doesn't
understand Chinese; but I would argue similarly that a computer, as a
collection of wires and silicon, or a brain, as a blob of protoplasm,
don't understand anything either.  I all three cases, the thing doing the
understanding is the program not the hardware.  

Searle acknowledges this argument (it's counterargument c in his
article), but answers it by imagining a situation in which the man in
the room memorizes the rules, the inbox, etc.  He argues that it can't
be the rules that do the understanding, since all there is in the room
is the man (who we agree doesn't understand Chinese).

The part I don't understand is, what difference does it make how the
rules are stored?  I don't see why it makes a difference if the man
memorizes the rules or reads them off a piece of paper.  In the latter
case, admittedly, you can point to the rule book; but that doesn't
mean the rule book doesn't exist in the former case.  It seems to me
that Searle's second example is really the same example, in which case
the argument (that it's the rules that do the understanding, not the man
in the room) remains unanswered.  

I expect the Scientific American Articles will set off another wave of
articles; I look forward to the debate.  

Kevin Crowston