Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!noao-gemini!noao!arizona!mike
From: mike@cs.arizona.edu (Mike Coffin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Sci. American AI debate: No Contest
Message-ID: <16603@megaron.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 5 Jan 90 17:03:27 GMT
References: <12679@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson
Lines: 63

From article <12679@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, by harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad):
> (1) Unfortunately, in suggesting that Searle is the one who is begging
> the question or assuming the truth of the hypothesis that syntax alone
> can constitute semantics you seem to have the logic reversed: In fact,
> Searle's the one who's TESTING that hypothesis and answering that question;
> and the Chinese-Room thought-experiment shows that the hypothesis fails
> the test and the answer is no! It is the proponents of the "systems
> reply" -- which merely amounts to a reiteration of the hypothesis in
> the face of Searle's negative evidence -- who are begging the question.

Of course, we naive hackers don't see any negative evidence.  Searle
tests the hypothesis and finds that he must either reject it or adopt a
point of view he finds counterintuitive.  We don't find that too
surprising because he has set up a thought experiment that is well
beyond the bounds of human experience and thus not likely to yield
intuitive results.

Moreover, I (at least) am not arguing that symbol pushing can produce
intelligence.  I merely argue that Searle has not proven that it
can't.  This is very different. (My own view is that we don't know
enough about intelligence to have the slightest idea what might be
necessary to create it.)

> By the way, in endorsing the systems reply in principle, as you do
> (apparently only because of its counterintuitiveness, and the fact that
> other counterintuitive things have, in the history of science, turned
> out to be correct after all), you leave out Searle's very apt RESPONSE
> to the counterintuitive idea that the "system" consisting of him plus
> the room and its contents might still be understanding even if he
> himself is not: He memorizes the rules, and henceforth he IS all there
> is to the system, yet still he doesn't understand Chinese. (And I hope
> you won't rejoin with the naive hackers' multiple-personality gambit at
> this point, which is CLEARLY wanting to save the original hypothesis at
> any counterfactual price: There is no reason whatsoever to believe that
> simply memorizing a bunch of symbols and symbol manipulation rules and
> then executing them is one of the etiologies of multiple personality
> disorder!)

As I have pointed out before, not all of us think the systems response
is counterintuitive.  I think that complicated systems almost always
display surprising properties that none of their components do.  Our
intuition is easily fooled when we apply it to subjects well outside
everyday experience.

Also, we don't postulate a multiple personality in the sense of human
pathology.  We postulate that Searle, after memorizing an absolutely
astonishing number of complicated rules and executing them with
immense speed and precision---a situation *far* outside current
experience---might exhibit quite amazing and unexpected properties.
In fact, he might simultaneously claim to be Searle, blindly executing
rules, and also exhibit an entirely different super-personality.
"Super" in the sense of being above, not cohabitant.  This surprises
me no more than the fact that the computer on my desk, which consists
of little more than a power supply and some flip-flops, seems, when
the right incantations are given, to exhibit behavior that follows the
semantics of any of dozens of computer languages.  The pieces are
blindly following the rule of physics; the whole seems almost to
have a mind of its own. 

-- 
Mike Coffin				mike@arizona.edu
Univ. of Ariz. Dept. of Comp. Sci.	{allegra,cmcl2}!arizona!mike
Tucson, AZ  85721			(602)621-2858