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From: marty@althea.UUCP (Martin B. Brilliant)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: What the Chinese Room is
Message-ID: <466@althea.UUCP>
Date: 1 Feb 90 10:22:47 GMT
References: <2602@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu> <1990Jan9.162338.28110@twwells.com> <9458@cbmvax.commodore.com> <21866@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <1990Jan27.004920.28355@agate.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: marty@althea.UUCP (Martin B. Brilliant)
Distribution: usa
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In article <1990Jan27.004920.28355@agate.berkeley.edu> johnb@sandstorm.Berkeley.EDU (John L. Bergquist) writes:
>
>So what happens when you have the person in the chinese room internalize the
>rules and the books? Meaning, suppose you have someone who had a photographic
>memory and memorized all the chinese input symbols and their corresponding
>output symbols? Imagine you are that person. Now the whole system is in your
>own mind; in essence you ARE the system. Do you understand Chinese? You would
>probably feel you do not, even though you could respond intelligently in
>Chinese to any question that was asked.

I think we are getting to the heart of the matter.  Let me first
dispose of some of Searle's nonsensical questions.  He described a
SYSTEM consisting of a person, some rulebooks, etc.  The he asked
whether the PERSON understood Chinese.  No, the SYSTEM that might or
might not understand Chinese is exactly the SYSTEM he described, not
any part of it, such as the person, or the books, or the room.  To
insist that a part of the system must contain the properties of the
whole is to create a homunculus argument.  The SYSTEM is assembled from
parts, and it is the fact of assembling it that gives it properties
that the parts alone do not possess.  That's probably what the term
"imposed order" refers to.

Now let's get to Searle's other question.  Does success in the Turing
test imply thinking?  No, of course not.  Turing's suggestion, as I
understand it, was that his test was a necessary, not sufficient,
condition.  If it can't pass the test, it's not thinking.  Whether it
is thinking, depends on how long you keep on testing and how skillful
the tester is.  I think, however, that Searle and others underestimate
the ingenuity of human testers.  No stupid rulebook parser could pass.

                                                      Marty
M. B. Brilliant   (201)946-8147  marty@althea.UUCP
-- 

                                                      Marty
M. B. Brilliant   (201)946-8147  marty@althea.UUCP