Wolfgang Schwarz <wschwarz at zedat.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
> "F. Frank LeFever" wrote:
> > The famous argument which you say Searle has "on his side"
> > is simply another example of a profound intellectual dishonesty.
> > Yes, it would be "odd" to say that the fellow in that room
> > "understood" the questions or answers, but it is dishonest
> > to neglect to say that this is a metaphore for a primitive
> > concept of brain function: somewhere in there, there is a
> > little man who "uses" all the information being piped
> > in to him, i.e., who does the "thinking", who is "conscious".
> > Obviously, the ROOM (with the little man's help) understands
> > Chinese very well.
>> I wouldn't call this obvious. Our ordinary concept of "understanding
> Chinese" is far from being applicable to rooms. And I would find it
> very odd indeed to say that the room understood the problems which I
> gave it as input.
Our ordinary concept of "understanding" is not being applied to rooms
because rooms do not usually answer questions asked to them. Why
wouldn't the concept be applicable rooms had they such an ability? Is
the phenomenon of a room answering questions intelligently really more
remarkable than the phenomenon of a human being doing so just
using a skullfull of wet circuitry?
[snip]
> The whole issue seems to depend on what is meant with "understanding".
> In a functional sense the Chinese room does understand. In the sense
> in which the term is commonly used, it doesn't, because understanding
> a question in this sense requires concious thinking about it, i.e.
> grasp of its semantical content.
It seems to me the room does exhibit consciousness and the grasp
of semantical content. It "exhibits" these in the common sense of the
term "exhibit". Searle assumes but fail to show that semantics and
consciousness themselves can not emerge in a system that manipulates
discrete symbols.
Regards,
Pierre-Normand Houle
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
