Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!hercules!gilham From: gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: The Chinese Room and the Babylonian Bureaucracy Message-ID: Date: 9 Jan 90 18:55:49 GMT References: <1990Jan9.060511.9121@mentor.com> Sender: usenet@csl.sri.com Organization: Computer Science Lab, SRI International, Menlo Park, CA. Lines: 22 In-reply-to: msellers@mentor.com's message of 9 Jan 90 06:05:11 GMT msellers@mentor.com (Mike Sellers) writes: =============== This whole improbable set up may seem to be begging the question of the original Chinese Room symbol manipulation scenario (though set up in the large), but it contains an important difference: Each Booth is blind to the functioning of the others, and knows only about its own activity. Individually they are rather primitive, if flexible, cuneiform processors, and possess none of the attributes we are interested in. However, taken together, we must conclude that (through some process we do not as yet understand (!)) the whole mass of them together will eventually --given the necessary and sufficient environmental input-- take on awareness, understanding, and cognizance. This must be the case, since the only existing example of a thing possessing these qualities aquires and maintains them by just such a system. =============== This is true ONLY if you assume that the only processes going on in the human mind are algorithmic. This seems to be the exact question we are trying to resolve. -Fred Gilham gilham@csl.sri.com