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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Sci. American AI debate: No Contest
Summary: Searle confronts Wittgenstein
Message-ID: <11294@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 9 Jan 90 14:53:04 GMT
References: <12679@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <18053@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU> <11274@venera.isi.edu> <1990Jan9.064320.2131@ug.cs.dal.ca>
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In article <1990Jan9.064320.2131@ug.cs.dal.ca> robertso@ug.cs.dal.ca.UUCP ()
writes:
>
>Wittgenstein's target, in both the family resemblance and private language 
>arguments, was a long standing philosophical tradition to the effect that
>ALL bits of language admit to a (simple enough to be useful) semantic
>reduction - Empirical Positivism.  Wittgenstein offered a radically different
>view of how we come to acquire  language, and so also of what we, as the one's
>who USE it, can say ABOUT it  (especially about MENTAL terms, like
>"understanding").
>
>I would be the first to cite these arguments in support of the idea that 
>machines, that is artifices, can (in principle) think, at least as well as
>we can digest pizza.  (A small taste of Searle's desperate wit).  But
>Wittgenstein did NOT question that we can and do reliably USE linguistic
>terms.  Just Because they don't lend themselves to criterial analyses does not
> imply that we don't "know what they mean", at least insofar as we seem to
> communicate adequately with them (albeit after much effort, at times...).
>That is why Searle can indeed help himself to the term 
>"understanding" without defining it.  Of course, if he implicitly uses it
>as having semantic properties which no one else thinks it does, as is charged,
>then he still has to give a good defense of his analysis of the term (which
>he doesn't).
>
This is a good point.  I think the key phrase is "communicate adequately."  If
Searle were to accept Wittgenstein's view of how we use words like
"understand," then he would be painting himself into a corner, since
all we would be talking about is how we communicate about observed behavior.
My guess is that he WANTS to assume that we can perform semantic reduction
on the word "understand" and then excuse himself for the fact that he will
not offer up his own version of that reduction.  This may make for a clever
debating technique, but it doesn't help the rest of us much when it comes to
communicating adequately while using the word "understanding."

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