[Wittrs] Re: Searle's CRA and its Implications
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:46:48 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Gordon Swobe <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
> --- On Tue, 3/16/10, SWM <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> > [Recall my point that this is about how consciousness can
> > be conceived, how we can imagine it! Note that I have been
> > stressing the point that the inability to imagine it in the
> > way Dennett proposes, or the unwillingness to do so, hangs
> > on an implicit presumption that consciousness, or, in this
> > case, understanding, cannot be reduced to more basic
> > constituents that are not themselves instances
> > of understanding. I have stressed that Searle's argument
> > hinges on precisely this insistence, that because there is
> > no understanding to be found in the Chinese Room, no
> > understanding is possible.
>
> Understanding does exist in the CR. Have you read the target article?
>
There are MANY articles and many books from Searle on this subject, a subject
that he built his reputation on. And I have read many of them though I can't
swear I've read everyone you have in mind. What is your "target article" and
what do you think it is saying that I am missing? That the man understands?
Well of course he understands his instructions and how to follow them but he
doesn't understand Chinese which is the issue here, i.e., is understanding
anything more than getting the answers right in some rote kind of way?
I would agree that it is but I would also say (and have said) that the lack of
such understanding in the CR as Searle has specked it says nothing about what
any other R (configuration of the same constituent activities) could understand
or the level of understanding it could reach.
> The man implements both an English and a Chinese version of the program. He
> manages of course to understand the English using exactly the same tools he
> had with the Chinese. How do you explain that discrepancy?
>
What discrepancy? I am not suggesting he understands Chinese and English!
Indeed, I am not suggesting the CR represents a system that understands
Chinese. I AM saying that the CR is inadequately specked to understand Chinese
(or English for that matter).
> It seems the man has full competency to understand Chinese if in fact syntax
> gives semantics. But alas syntax does not give semantics.
>
Note that I do not assert that the CR or the man in the CR understand Chinese.
I agree (and have always agreed) that they don't. The issue is whether the CR
could, and I argue it can if it were more adequately specked. My point is that
the understanding in question is a system feature not a process feature and
that Searle's argument confuses the two. That the constituent processes in an R
like the CR do not have understanding in themselves doesn't mean that a more
complex system consisting solely of such constituents would not have it.
> I went back and forth with Budd on this point on another list; he finally
> convinced me that the English semantics in the room plays a necessary role in
> the experiment for precisely the reason above. It's a control, so to speak.
>
> -gts
>
>
But it has no implication for the CPU. The point of the CR is that it simulates
a central processing unit. If it didn't, if it were really about a mind within
a mind (Searle in the room), it wouldn't even appear to demonstrate what Searle
claims for it. It wouldn't even fool those going with the standard intuition
that minds aren't physical or part of the physical world.
SWM
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