Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!jeff
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Is the Chinese Room Experiment Consistent?
Message-ID: <1529@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 10 Jan 90 21:18:45 GMT
References: <1798@uwm.edu>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 9

In article <1798@uwm.edu> markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes:
>     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".)

I suspect Searle did it that way because he was arguing against a
position that made such assumptions.  Maybe we can start talking about
Dreyfus (?sp) again.  He at least used to argue that understanding
can't be captured by rules.