On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 3:13 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>wrote:
> > > On Tuesday, April 23, 2013 4:31:05 PM UTC-4, Brian Tenneson wrote: > >> >> >> On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 1:26 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com>wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> Searle wasn't wrong. The whole point of the Chinese Room is to point out >>> that computation is a disconnected, anesthetic function which is >>> accomplished with no need for understanding of larger contexts. >>> >>> >> >> How do we know that what humans do is understand things rather than just >> compute things? >> > > > Because we care about what we understand, and we identify with it > personally. Understanding is used also to mean compassion. When someone > demonstrates a lack of human understanding, we say that they are behaving > robotically, like a machine, etc. Questions like, "How do you know you are > conscious?", or "How do you know that you feel?" are sophistry. How do you > know that you can ask that question? > > Sounds circular. "we do understand things because we care about what we understand." The type of understanding I was referring to was not about compassion. Why is it so strange to think that we are stuck in a big Chinese room, without really understanding anything but being adept at pushing symbols around? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
