Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!mcgill-vision!bloom-beacon!snorkelwacker!think!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!amdahl!pacbell!rtech!wrs!hwajin From: hwajin@ganges.wrs.com (Hwa Jin Bae) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Chinese Room by Shannon and McCarthy from 1956 Message-ID: Date: 6 Feb 90 20:12:01 GMT References: <2891@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <2903@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <10599@june.cs.washington.edu> <14266@cs.yale.edu> Sender: news@wrs.wrs.com Organization: Wind River Systems, Emeryville, CA Lines: 59 In-reply-to: blenko-tom@CS.YALE.EDU's message of 4 Feb 90 18:21:34 GMT In article <14266@cs.yale.edu> blenko-tom@CS.YALE.EDU (Tom Blenko) writes: First, Searle has had quite a distinguished and productive career as a philosopher independent of anything he has written about AI. No one is making fun of his career as a philosopher. Everyone knows that he studied philosophy and was a Rhodes scholar and has written several books on various subjects, etc. This doesn't mean that he knows what he's talking about when it comes to AI or computers. His simple-minded and ill-motivated attack [he used to say that he was out to get those who waste valuable grant money on "useless" studies] on connectionist and parallelism approach to AI is yet another proof that he's just what he has been all along -- a hack. Second, it is evident to anyone who has done some homework where Searle's concerns originated. Indeed, he himself adopted the functionalist view of meaning early on, and moved to a different view subsequently. He has even gone to the trouble of writing a book to discuss the latter point of view! He's not the only one who's done this -- there are numerous examples of the same story -- people who started out as a skeptic but turned into a true believer and talk ad nauseam about their revelations. What's the point? Does this turn-of-his-positions make his ignorant criticisms any more valid? I think that conduct in this newsgroup of late has been disgraceful. I strongly doubt that several respondants have read the article(s) in question, and it is quite clear that most have failed to understand what they say (never mind arguments about whether the position presented is correct or defensible). And now it has moved from the level of sophistry contributed by the uninformed to the higher plane of attacks on Searle's professional standing mounted by the profoundly ignorant. I think the readership is entitled to some relief. You certainly have a very negative view of the readership in this newsgroup. On the contrary, I strongly believe that everyone in this newsgroup has at one time another (if not in the Jan issue of Scientific American) read Searle's Chinese Room blather and probably by now sick and tired of its retarded rhetorics. After all, he's been dwelling on it since 1981 without ever adequately responding to his critics [I sincerely think that he doesn't even understand some of the best arguments presented to him over the years since he first brought up this Chinese Room nonsense; he simply chooses to pick on less elegant/powerful arguments and decline to comment on the rest -- as he did in his Scientific American article -- he doesn't even attempt to properly address the criticisms in the accompanying article in the same issue of the magazine, the luminuous room article.] Hofstadter and Dennett have shattered the Chinese Room on every point long ago. Go look them up on your bookshelves. While I doubt that this was its intent, I sometimes believe Searle's Minds, Brains, and Programs has become an intelligence test for the AI community. This is unfortunate. This is truly laughable. Most of us believe that the responses to Searle's Chinese Room have become a litmus test for its critics. hwajin -- Hwa Jin Bae, Wind River Systems, Emeryville CA hwajin@wrs.com (uunet!wrs!hwajin)