My view is that the problem with the Chinese Room argument is precisely the manner in which it uses the word 'understanding'. It is implied that in this context this word refers to mutual human experience. Understanding has another meaning, namely the emergent process some of you described, which can happen in a computer in a different way from the way it happens in a human being. In fact notice that the experiment says that the computer will not understand chinese the way humans do. Therefore it implies the first meaning, not the second.
Regarding grounding, I think that any intelligence has to collect data from somewhere in order to lear. Where it collects it from will determine the type of intelligence it is. Collecting stories is still a way of collecting information, but such an intelligence will never be able to move in the real world, as it has no clue regarding it. On the other hand an intelligence who learns by moving in the real world, yet has never read anything, will gather no information from a book. ------------------------------------------- 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
