Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!aplcen!samsung!usc!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!crowston From: crowston@athena.mit.edu (Kevin G Crowston) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Fwd: A Test for "Understanding" Message-ID: <1990Jan9.202327.24770@athena.mit.edu> Date: 9 Jan 90 20:23:27 GMT References: Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system) Reply-To: crowston@athena.mit.edu (Kevin G Crowston) Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lines: 19 One strategy to make Searle's argument clearer is to separate the different uses of understand that are floating around. Searle-understanding is understanding as defined by Searle; Turing-understanding is understanding as defined by the Turing test. The Chinese room does not Searle-understand anything, but it does Turing-understand Chinese. Searle obviously prefers Searle-understanding to Turing-understanding (or more accurately, doesn't believe Turing-understanding is "true" understanding), but I prefer Turing-understanding to Searle- understanding (at least I know how to tell when something Turing-understands). In this case, AI can be viewed as an attempt to create programs that Turing-understand. As Searle says, we're not even in the game; but then, it's not clear we ever claimed (or want) to be. Kevin Crowston