Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!hercules!gilham From: gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Sci. American AI debate: No Contest Message-ID: Date: 5 Jan 90 18:39:10 GMT References: <12679@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <12702@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Sender: usenet@csl.sri.com Organization: Computer Science Lab, SRI International, Menlo Park, CA. Lines: 61 In-reply-to: kpfleger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU's message of 5 Jan 90 16:02:29 GMT kpfleger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Karl Robert Pfleger) writes: ------ Which brings us to the point I made a few posts back, I think to this group. The point is that most of the Searle article rests on definitions. Here the one in question is symbol manipulation. The more critical one, I think, is understanding. Also, intelligence is a key one. The whole conclusion of the argument is that the system can't 'understand' or won't be 'intelligent.' But these things are never defined. ------ I interpret Searle's argument as follows: There is something we (humans) do, called understanding. We usually know when we do it, and we can often say when others do or do not understand. We can also give examples of, say, a computer system ``not understanding'', as when it bills someone for $0.00 and causes increasingly threatening letters to be send demanding payment. So we then assume that we have a system based on manipulating and transforming what we will loosely call symbols, or what I would call physical patterns. Let's say (counterfactually) that this system can take written input from a Chinese and then produce written output that the Chinese would interpret as being an intelligent reply. Suppose this were a program running on a computer, it would pass the Turing test. Now if someone emulates this system by hand, manipulating the patterns in an equivalent way, this person can legitimately claim that he doesn't understand Chinese, yet he can follow the rules and produce the desired results. Assuming we are using books and paper, the only physical apparatus existing is the books, paper, and the person who doesn't understand Chinese. The question is, what understands Chinese? Searle claims that there is nothing there to understand Chinese. If one claims that the ``system'' somehow understands Chinese, Searle says that you can do away with the books and paper, and memorize the rules. The person doing the manipulation will still not understand Chinese, and there is no other physical entity left to be a candidate for understanding. From this, Searle concludes that the Chinese room does not understand, that is, it does not share in the experience that we are talking about when we use the word understand. Thus, I don't think it is necessary to pin down the word `understand' any more carefully. I would also say that a computer doesn't manipulate symbols. It transforms one physical state or set of physical patterns into another physical state. As far as I know, it does not do anything other than this. We (thinking humans) interpret those physical states as symbols in an arbitrary fashion. We then go on to derive meaning from those symbols. Thus we interpret the computer's behavior to be pertinent to the process we call thinking. I see little difference between this and the idea that a saw knows about architecture because it performs functions we find useful when building buildings. -Fred Gilham gilham@csl.sri.com