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From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Is the Chinese Room Experiment Consistent?
Message-ID: <6048@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 6 Jan 90 15:28:51 GMT
References: <1798@uwm.edu>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 48

From article <1798@uwm.edu>, by markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark William Hopkins):

>...  What makes anyone think that it is even possible to
>formulate a complete set of language rules that do not also take into account
>our mobility and musculature, our sensory systems ...

Nobody does think that, so far I can gather.  So the rules must
take those things into account.

>If you conduct the Chinese Room Experiment -- incorporating a TRULY
>complete set of rules for Chinese -- you're going to end up proving the
>Chinese Room Argument wrong. ...

How so?  Where does the proof of wrongness come in?

>How are you going to teach a system a languages' semantics if it
>can't at least simulate these processes? ...

You aren't, so you incorporate the means to do the simulations
in the rules.

>That's gonna be an awfully huge Chinese Room.

Yes, it is.  Is this your proof?  The size of the Room is great,
therefore the argument is wrong?

>So the question is, why do we even accept the premise of the Chinese Room
>Experiment when it is, in my mind, obviously contradictory? (that a language
>can be "described" independent of the way it is "understood" and "used".)

That there is no understanding is the conclusion of the argument,
not the premise.  But you mean, I guess, that the rules are
suppose to be "formal", apparently meaning that their symbols
are uninterpreted.  But you've shown that some of those symbols
must have interpretations.  Right?  But so far as the system of
rules goes, if no reference is made by a rule to any interpretations 
that might be assignable to the symbols, the system of rules is still
syntactic and not semantic.  The fact that in observing the way
the rules work you can arrive at interpretations for some of
the symbols or that the programmers made use of interpretations
in formulating the rules does not make the system semantic.

But if you *could* conclude that the premise was contradictory,
this would be to *agree* with the argument, not to disagree
with it.  So when I disagree with you about the premise being
contradictory, I am attacking the argument, not defending it.

				Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu