tskelly@ccvax.ucd.ie (11/21/90)
Good day to y'all, First order of business is to say that I am a relatively new newser and have probably missed a lot of the discussion on the subject of Searle's Chinese room - so, apologies, in advance, to anyone whose toes I step on!! Now, down to the main business! From the few postings that I have read on this topic I have to say I'm very dissapointed with the fact that nearly everybody seems to have missed the point. To illustrate, imagine an ENGLISH room! ( I know there are reasons why Searle chose to use Chinese but I trust the readers of this will understand them and also understand why I choose to use English!!). So, in the English room we have an *entity* which takes pieces of paper with symbols on it and etc. etc. The important point is that the entity inside the room examines the symbols on the input paper only to apply rules to them to get a string of symbols for passing back out! Now, in comes a piece of paper with the symbols "WHAT IS 2 + 2?" After matching up the symbols and the rule book the entity should arrive at the symbol "4" which it passes back out! The entity has arrived at this symbol in answer to the input purely by symbol manipultaion - in other words the rule book will say something to the effect of " when the symbols '2' and '2' are seperated by a '+' etc. then the resulting symbol is '4' ". However, does an intelligent entity do this? To be quite candid, I think an intelligent entity does do this sort of symbol manipulation - ie. very often when asked "what is 2 + 2?" we arrive at the anser "4" purely by the fact that the symbol "4" has been matched to that question! BUT! an intelligent entity does not always do it by symbol manipulation. An intelligent entity can grasp all aspects of the MEANING of the symbols "2" and "+" - ie. we can visualise what it is to be "2" (2 apples or 2 computers etc. etc.) and we know what it is to "+" numbers together (2 apples on one table and 2 apples on another table moved together onto the same table and recounted give us 4 apples and we know what 4 apples is!) The entity in the room cannot abstract from the symbol "2" and apply it as a concept. All it can do is manipulate it symbolically using rules and in relation to the symbols surrounding it! Now, I don't want to labour the point so I'll say no more on that one and trust that you understand what I mean (which is more than the ENGLISH room could do!) Another interesting point that has occured to me is this : Suppose Searle's Chinese room was created on 1/1/1800 and was sealed except for the input slot and the output slot. At the time of it's creation the rule book was sufficient to manipulate all symbols that existed. So, everybody was in awe of this "intelligent" room! Now, I come along and present it with a question concerning "COMPUTERS" or "SPACE SHUTTLES". Now, to anyone who claims that the room could even begin to manipulate the symbols "COMPUTER" or "SPACE SHUTTLE" I can only say 'piff'!! And furthermore it could never manipulate these symbols because no-body can get in to change the rule book!!! Anyhow, let's see you pull those arguments apart ( but please address the thrust of the arguments and not some silly little points that have very little to do with what I have said) Incidently, I am pro AI and I feel that while Searle's Chinese room addresses a certain aspect of comtemporary views in AI it does not contradict the possibility of AI! I would like to see some discussion on other aspects in the AI line and an end to this flogging of a quite wounded horse! Stephen Kelly TSKELLY@CCVAX.UCD.IE
pbiron@weber.ucsd.edu (Paul Biron) (11/24/90)
In article <12160.274a7a65@ccvax.ucd.ie> tskelly@ccvax.ucd.ie writes: > >with symbols on it and etc. etc. The important point is that the entity >inside the room examines the symbols on the input paper only to apply rules >to them to get a string of symbols for passing back out! >Now, in comes a piece of paper with the symbols > "WHAT IS 2 + 2?" >After matching up the symbols and the rule book the entity should arrive >at the symbol "4" which it passes back out! >The entity has arrived at this symbol in answer to the input >purely by symbol manipultaion - in other words the rule book will say ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >something to the effect of " when the symbols '2' and '2' are seperated >by a '+' etc. then the resulting symbol is '4' ". > >Stephen Kelly >TSKELLY@CCVAX.UCD.IE The important point is that "the entity inside the room" must do some processing on its input in order to "examine the symbols". The symbols are not just given. IOW, Searle (and those who find his arguments convincing) assume that "examining the symbols" is NOT part of 'understanding' (whatever that means :-) But it is one of the most important parts! Even if it were the case that once we have "examined the symbols", we do "pure symbol manipulation" (which I seriously doubt), that alone would not show that the "room" did not understand, since it doesn't account for the act of "examining". If the sole point of Searle's argument is that 'understanding', 'cognition', etc. are NOT "symbol manipulation" we didn't need Searle to tell us that (Newell & Simon not withstanding)! A few postings ago, someone mentioned Harnad's "Other Minds" paper, I'd also suggest that anyone interested in this topic read Harnad's "Minds, Machines and Searle", _Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artifical Intelligence_, Vol 1, No 1, 1989. Both this and the "Other Minds" paper are available (in troff format) via anon ftp from princeton.edu, in the directory /pub/harnad. Paul Biron pbiron@ucsd.edu (619) 534-5758 Central University Library, Mail Code C-075-R Social Sciences DataBase Project University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, Ca. 92093
thornley@cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley) (11/25/90)
In article <12160.274a7a65@ccvax.ucd.ie> tskelly@ccvax.ucd.ie writes: > > >Good day to y'all, > >First order of business is to say that I am a relatively new newser and >have probably missed a lot of the discussion on the subject of Searle's >Chinese room - so, apologies, in advance, to anyone whose toes I step on!! > >Now, down to the main business! >From the few postings that I have read on this topic I have to say I'm >very dissapointed with the fact that nearly everybody seems to have >missed the point. >To illustrate, imagine an ENGLISH room! ( I know there are reasons why >Searle chose to use Chinese but I trust the readers of this will understand >them and also understand why I choose to use English!!). > >[Claims that the English room does nothing but manipulate symbols, > while an intelligent entity, in addition to being able to manipulate > symbols, also understands the meanings of the symbols.] > >Now, I don't want to labour the point so I'll say no more on that one and >trust that you understand what I mean (which is more than the ENGLISH room >could do!) I like the idea of an English Room; I think it easier to visualize and less likely to inadvertantly lead to inaccurate thinking. I do not follow your argument that the English Room is merely symbol manipulation while an intelligent entity understands things. On what do you base that? To put it more simply, I can imagine a few possible meanings: 1. Humans understand, programs only manipulate symbols. Therefore, we can always tell a human from a program by testing for understanding, and therefore no program can ever pass the Turing Test. 2. It is possible for a program to imitate humanity by manipulating symbols, but we know that it is only imitating intelligence and understanding, while we know that humans understand. (Here I must ask, "How do we know that humans understand? And how do we know that a specific human understands a specific thing, other than by asking the human questions on the topic? How do we then know that the human understands, and has not simply assimilated some symbol manipulation rules and is producing correct answers to our questions without actual understanding?") 3. We know that programs do not understand anything because they only manipulate symbols. We consider it possible that humans are intelligent, since the principles of their behavior are not known. However, should it become known that humans do no more than symbol manipulation, we would then conclude that they do not in fact understand things. It is perfectly possible that I have erred, and that your position is not one of these three. Please tell me which of these three you are arguing from, or give me a better idea of what you actually think. If you are arguing from position 2 above, I would also appreciate it if you would answer the questions I have provided. > >Another interesting point that has occured to me is this : >Suppose Searle's Chinese room was created on 1/1/1800 and was sealed >except for the input slot and the output slot. At the time of it's >creation the rule book was sufficient to manipulate all symbols that existed. >So, everybody was in awe of this "intelligent" room! Now, I come along >and present it with a question concerning "COMPUTERS" or "SPACE SHUTTLES". >Now, to anyone who claims that the room could even begin to manipulate the >symbols "COMPUTER" or "SPACE SHUTTLE" I can only say 'piff'!! And furthermore >it could never manipulate these symbols because no-body can get in to change >the rule book!!! In this case it is not a true Chinese Room. See my other posting on this - in summary, Searle assumes that the C.R. is an implementation of a program that will pass the Turing Test; the T.T. is, essentially, indistinguishability from a human. Since a human mature 190 years ago who has not aged since, and who has kept up conversations with others since, could discuss computers and shuttles, the Chinese Room could also. If you have problems with this, you have some misunderstanding of the Chinese Room or the Turing Test, or you simply do not believe that any program could pass the Turing Test. (The other interpretation is that, in 190 years, the Chinese Room has only had time for half an hour's conversation, and thus considers itself firmly embedded in 1800. However, I don't think that's what you meant. :-) > >Incidently, I am pro AI and I feel that while Searle's Chinese room addresses >a certain aspect of comtemporary views in AI it does not contradict the >possibility of AI! I would like to see some discussion on other aspects in the >AI line and an end to this flogging of a quite wounded horse! > OK, start another line of discussion. Unfortunately, comp.ai. philosophy was, as far as I can tell, created with the main purpose of getting the Chinese Room off comp.ai. If you can start another good philosophical debate on AI, great! I can only type so many things on this one (expressions of disbelief from regular readers assumed :-) DHT