Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!cs.dal.ca!ug.cs.dal.ca!robertso
From: robertso@ug.cs.dal.ca
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Sci. American AI debate: No Contest
Summary: Searle's cake
Keywords: eating it, too
Message-ID: <1990Jan10.030054.16300@ug.cs.dal.ca>
Date: 10 Jan 90 03:00:54 GMT
References: <12679@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <18053@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU> <11274@venera.isi.edu> <1990Jan9.064320.2131@ug.cs.dal.ca> <11294@venera.isi.edu>
Sender: robertso@ug.cs.dal.ca.UUCP (Chris Robertson)
Reply-To: Stephen Smoliar
Organization: Math, Stats & CS, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada
Lines: 28


  In response to my earlier posting, Stephen Smoliar writes:

>. . . 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."

  Yes.

  Interestingly enough, his talk at Concordia seemed to emphasize that he DOES
  want to subscribe to a non-reductionistic account of, among others, mental
  predicates.  The well-worn analogy was solubility - a property instantiated
  globally, not locally.

  The problem is that he has hoisted reductionism upon the would-be Strong-AI
  defender, whether asked for or not.  He CHARGES strong-AI with the assumption
  that language, (and mind), are REDUCIBLE.  But that's not the only option!
  Of course his arguments work well against reductionistic models of cognition,
  but he leaves untreated several other enticing models (like Connectionism).

  ===================

  - Chris Robertson                     Hey . . . that's my lunch.