markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark William Hopkins) (12/30/89)
In article <7853@portia.Stanford.EDU> dove@portia.Stanford.EDU (Dav Amann) writes: >If thought is merely the process of solving problems, then answers >become obvious. Solving problems does not imply conciousness. My Mac >solves all sorts of problems for me, but it certainly does not spend >its off hours contemplating the Eternal Void. (At least, I don't >think that it does.) Of course it doesn't. But it can be programmed to do so, and programming it to deal with problems on such a broad scope is a necessity in designing general (learnable and teachable) problem solving architectures. I've already seen programs where I can recognize its ability to understand its environment and understand what needs to be done in the code itself. When you have a program that includes such statements as (a fragment of a Prolog program implementing the famous Strips scenario) * M at Point after M goto Point. * M on Box after M climbon Box. * * Door in Room1 always :- Door connects Room1 with Room2 always. * point(1) in room(1) always. * lightswitch(1) at point(4) always. * door(1) connects room(1) to room(5). and have the meanings of words such as "always", "at", etc ingrained in a general plan-generating program to the point where you can actually see it "feeling" the constraints governing its mobility and its manipulation of its environment (the program and problem description are supposed to guide a machine's motion and actions in the Strips scenario) ... then you know its understands. Language understanding is ultimately based on imperatives. Searle's experiment fails to take into account that no complete set of rules for a language can possibly exist that do not take into account the relation of language to our mobility, base experince, sensory processing, etc. So the Chinese Room Experiment when REALLY carried out will prove that machines can think. By the time the experiment is done, the machine will be able to eat, have sex, walk, and stop a tank dead in its tracks too ...