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From: kohout@wam.umd.edu (Robert C. Kohout)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: more Chinese Room
Keywords: Chinese room, CR, Searle
Message-ID: <1990Feb13.225830.13432@wam.umd.edu>
Date: 13 Feb 90 22:58:30 GMT
Sender: usenet@wam.umd.edu (USENET Posting)
Reply-To: kohout@wam.umd.edu (Robert C. Kohout)
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Organization: University of Maryland at College Park
Lines: 49



I must say that I am somewhat surprised to see this Searle discussion
continuing. I haven't looked at this group in several months, and I 
thought the Chinese Room had died a merciful death. Insofar as I see
that it is still a topic of conversation, I would like to make 
the following points:

1) In "Minds, Brains and Science", Searle makes the following comment in
the opening paragraph of his second chapter, entitled 'Can Computers Think'?

    "The prevailing view in philosophy, psychology and artificial 
    intelligence is one which emphasizes the analogies between the
    functioning of the brain and the functioning of digital
    computers. According to the most extreme version of this view,
    the brain is just a digital computer and the mind is just a
    computer program. One could summarize this view - I call it 
    'strong artificial intelligence', or 'strong AI' - by saying that
    the mind is to the brain, as the program is to the computer 
    hardware."

Do any of you actually agree with this summation? In particular, I want
to point out that Searle equates mind with program. In all my time reading
this group, I don't recall a single instance of such a statement. We may
believe a lot of things, but do any AI practitioners/afficiandos out there
actually think that mind/brain = program/hardware?

2) Even given this notion of the relationship between mind and brain,
which I regard more or less of a straw dog, Searle manages to bungle
his argument. That is, later in the chapter, when he presents his now
famous CR argument, Searle puts the human in the place of the hardware,
and then points out that it is difficult to claim that such a person
could understand Chinese. Remember, Searle claims to be trying to debunk
the mind/brain = program/hardware notion. He posits a human who interprets
a set of instructions about which he knows nothing. That is, he equates
a human with the machine and the set of instructions with the program.
Thus, by his own (albeit poor) analogy, one should not expect the human
to understand, any more than one would expect the brain (vis a vis the Mind)
to understand. Searle can't even shoot down his own weakly constructed
creation.

3) All Searle really shows is something that we all know already. No
matter how grandiose our program, the bare metal of the digital computer
as we currently know it will never itself become aware. Big deal. The
Chinese Room might start a lot of great, go-nowhere discussions, but it
proves, very, very little.


R.Kohout