The Chinese Room concept became more palatable to me when I started putting the emphasis on "nese" and not on "room". /Chinese/ Room, not Chinese /Room/. I don't know why this is.
I think it changes the implied meaning from a room where Chinese happens to be spoken, to a room for the speaking/production of Chinese. Think of it as a function call... chinese(). I'm not sure it describes a great deal more than this. A chain or network of Chinese rooms with sensors at one end and motor effectors at the other could be entirely capable of understanding, I think. On 8/4/08, Terren Suydam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi Harry, > > All the Chinese Room argument shows, if you accept the arguments, is that > approaches to AI in which symbols are *given*, cannot manifest understanding > (aka an internal sense of meaning) from the perspective of the AI. By > given, I mean simply that symbols are incorporated into the programming, or > hard-coded. All purely logical or algorithmic approaches to AI involve > symbols that are given, and so suffer from this critique. > > There are at least two ways around this (besides denying Searle's argument). > One is to deny that "understanding" is necessary for an AGI, and some folks > do take that position, although it seems untenable to me. > > The other is to adopt an approach to building an AI in which no symbols are > given. Instead, symbols are acquired in runtime, and refer not to some > external entity but are internally structured in terms of the AI's ongoing > experience. I won't bother to define "ongoing experience" unless someone > asks me to, at the risk of putting people to sleep. > > Terren > > > --- On Mon, 8/4/08, Harry Chesley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Terren Suydam wrote: >> > ... >> > Without an internal >> > sense of meaning, symbols passed to the AI are simply >> arbitrary data >> > to be manipulated. John Searle's Chinese Room >> (see Wikipedia) >> > argument effectively shows why manipulation of >> ungrounded symbols is >> > nothing but raw computation with no understanding of >> the symbols in >> > question. >> >> Searle's Chinese Room argument is one of those things >> that makes me >> wonder if I'm living in the same (real or virtual) >> reality as everyone >> else. Everyone seems to take it very seriously, but to me, >> it seems like >> a transparently meaningless argument. >> >> It's equivalent to saying that understanding cannot be >> decomposed; that >> you don't get understanding (the external perspective) >> without using >> understanding (the person or computer inside the room). I >> don't see any >> reason why this should be true. How to do it is what AI >> research is all >> about. >> >> To look at it another way, it seems to me that the Chinese >> Room is >> exactly equivalent to saying "AI is impossible." >> Until we actually get >> AI working, I can't really disprove that statement, but >> there's no >> reason I should accept it either. >> >> Yet smarter people than I seem to take the Chinese Room >> completely >> seriously, so maybe I'm just not seeing it. >> >> >> >> ------------------------------------------- >> agi >> Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now >> RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ >> Modify Your Subscription: >> https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; >> Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > > > > > > ------------------------------------------- > agi > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
