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/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
