Xref: utzoo comp.ai:5848 sci.philosophy.tech:2037 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!delta.eecs.nwu.edu!cliff From: cliff@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (Cliff Chaput) Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.philosophy.tech Subject: Re: What the Chinese Room is Message-ID: <3488@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 3 Feb 90 17:21:44 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> <466@althea.UUCP> Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: cliff@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (Cliff Chaput) Distribution: usa Organization: Northwestern U, Evanston IL, USA Lines: 99 In article <466@althea.UUCP> marty@althea.UUCP (Martin B. Brilliant) writes: >No stupid rulebook parser could pass. > > Marty Ah! But according to Searle's statement of the criteria, the rules of the book are designed to be *indistinguishable* from a native Chinese speaker! This means that every response you would expect from a Chinese person you could get from this book. That's some book, if you ask me. So if you're looking for intelligence in the Chinese room, I'd examine the book. Given the current definition of the problem, they guy in the room doesn't know chinese, the symbols don't know chinese, but the BOOK DOES! Otherwise, how else could it be indistinguishable from a native Chinese speaker? This explains the anomalous "memorizing the book" problem: if the book knows Chinese, then a man memorizing a book does nothing more than change the medium. The information remains the same. I realize I'm not being that clear, be let me give an analogous example (god save me!). There's a program out there called Mathematica, which does an awful lot of mathematics from top to bottom (Integrations, Equation solving, all sorts of neat stuff). The program includes most of the known rules of mathematics. Is it safe to say that this program "knows" mathematics? I would think so. I can't expect any other person who knows mathematics to do much more that Mathematica. Now, this is not saying that people won't do more; some are better at math insights, some are better at passing math tests, some are better at showing their work. But I would claim that these are not central to the knowledge of mathematics proper. Even if we want to reduce it some and ask, "Does Mathematica know algebra?" one would surely be forced to answer positively. Now can I say that my NeXT knows mathematics? Kinda, but not in the same way. I know that through the computer I can access the mathematical information that Mathematica provides, but I am also aware that Mathematica is but a part of the NeXT. I cannot claim that the Interface Builder knows mathematics. Nor can I claim the same for Webster's Dictionary, WriteNow, etc. Now say I got a source listing of Mathematica. Can I now say that this source listing knows mathematics? Again, what is it to know mathematics? Will it perform the mathematical feats that a human would? Suppose you took ascii codes for the string "D[x^3,x]" and fed it to the input routines of the program. You could trace from there the operations that took place and followed it all the way to the output routines which gave you "3 x^2". Clearly this source listing has the same information the the running program has, or even a human (in this particular area). Okay. Now we take some guy with a remarkable memory, know-how of computer programming, and no knowledge of ascii codes. He memorizes the source code for Mathematica. Now, you take the string "D[x^3,x]" and convert it into ascii codes by hand, and tell this mnematic wonder to feed this code into the input routines of his memorized mathematics source, trace the program through completion, and report the code that is given by the output routine. Will this code, when translated back into text, be "3 x^2"? Most certainly! Though we can not say with any reassurance that the man knows mathematics. Even if he did, he wouldn't know to use it because he is being told ascii numbers which, as stated above, have no meaning to him. Why do we run up against this wall? We commonly misplace the first person. When we talk about ourselves, what do we mean? If I were to say, "I am injured," does this mean that my entire body injured? My vocal cords are certainly not injured, my mind seems to be relatively intact. No, certainly I must mean that a part of me is injured. If I say, "I am happy," it is not reasonable to say that my knee is happy, my eyes are happy, or my hair is happy, though it is clear that these are intrinsically parts of my whole. So when I say, "I know mathematics," which part of me do I mean then? Well, of course, I mean my brain. "My brain knows mathematics," would then be a sentence with identical meaning to "I know mathematics." Right? Well, what happens if I say, "My brain knows how to pump blood through my body," or "My brain knows how to replicate human life," or "My brain knows how to block out pain if it gets too intense." These are all true statements, but are they really the same as "I know how to pump blood through my body, replicate human life, and block out pain."? There seems to be a level of understanding that we are missing. Surely our brain can accomplish these tasks, but do we know how it's done? These are usually referred to as unconscious activities. So it is possible to say that a person knows how to do something without being conscious of the mechanism involved. As a result, it is possible that a person could know mathematics without being aware that he knows mathematics, or, even if he is aware, to understand the mathematics. Continuing on the same pattern, any body of knowledge could be said to have the same property, including Chinese. I hope this sheds a light or two on what I'm trying to get at. We should be careful when we say the computer knows Chinese, or the room knows Chinese. And we should understand that storing knowledge is not the same as knowing. So Searle hasn't done much but to point out this false assumption through contradiction. However, the knowledge is still there, no matter how it is accessed. Just because we are not conscious of the methods by which blood is pumped through our body does not imply that this doesn't happen. If WriteNow doesn't know mathematics, that doesn't mean a NeXT cannot add two and two. And if we do not know Chinese, we may very well be able to respond like a native Chinese speaker given the right information. Cliff Chaput Mneme Project, Northwestern University Psychology Dept. cliff@mneme.psych.nwu.edu, cliff@eecs.nwu.edu