Xref: utzoo talk.philosophy.misc:3643 comp.ai:6074
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!dsinc!netnews.upenn.edu!cps3xx!sticklen
From: sticklen@cpswh.cps.msu.edu (Jon Sticklen)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai
Subject: Re: Why the Chinese Room doesn't convince
Message-ID: <6595@cps3xx.UUCP>
Date: 24 Feb 90 19:20:46 GMT
References: <12015@venera.isi.edu>
Sender: usenet@cps3xx.UUCP
Reply-To: sticklen@cpswh.cps.msu.edu (Jon Sticklen)
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Michigan State University
Lines: 45

From article <12015@venera.isi.edu>, by smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar):

...


i have a similar intuition as stephen that symbol level processing 
is not everything. but i find his arguments not compelling me toward 
that conclusion. the gist of stephen's argument is that his narative
paragraph about PSYCHO and string quartets is not what communicates 
his expereince to me, but rather that his narative puts me in a "mental
state" that is similar to his, and that in fact the information was
somehow in me all the time. 

no problem. another, maybe more obvious example, is of couples that have
been together for many years and that have to utter only the slighest
phoneme for the other to seemingly totally understand some subtle
communication. the content of the communication is pretty clearly mostly
in the receiver, and the provocation by the sender is just a trigger.

but that observation does not seem to support sub-symbolic representation
and computation. it would seem equally plausible that the hearer (or
reader of stephen's paragraph) had that information stored somehow 
symbolically, and once triggered it popped up.

where is the compelling support for sub-symbolic storage and retrieval
in stephen's example?

again, i emphasize that i share the intuition that some combination of
symbol level processing and sub-symbol level processing is going
to be necessary. i just don't that stephen's example is helping to force
us in that direction.

	---jon---



-------------------------------------------------------------
	Jon Sticklen
	Artificial Intelligence/Knowledge Based Systems Group
	Computer Science Department
	Michigan State University
	East Lansing, MI  48824-1027
	517-353-3711
	FAX: 517-336-1061
-------------------------------------------------------------