--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Gordon Swobe <wittrsamr@...> wrote: > --- On Mon, 3/22/10, SWM <wittrsamr@...> wrote: > > > That's because in the Chinese Room our man is ONLY a CPU, > > The idea that he exists only as a CPU comes from you, not from Searle. > Perhaps you should read Searle on his own thought experiment! > > http://web.archive.org/web/20071210043312/http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/MindsBrainsPrograms.html > > > > -gts I have and I am saying the idea that the understanding of the man in the room is irrelevant is PART of the thought experiment. You claim, on the other hand, that the man's understanding is key because, as you have put it, try as he might he doesn't understand Chinese (so, presumably, if he weren't trying, then the thought experiment wouldn't work?). I, on the other hand, have said that his trying to understand Chinese is not the point of the CR. Rather, it's point is to show that the rote processes of using a look-up table and matching inputted squiggles to prescribed outputted ones is designed to replicate what a computer system does. The point of Searle's argument is to "show" that no matter how accurate the matching might be (because the man in the room has sufficient instructions for performing the matches and performs those effectively, according to those instructions), we would nevertheless agree that that man doesn't understand Chinese. And THAT, I have said, is the point, i.e., that the man is not doing what a human Chinese speaker (who understands Chinese) is doing (grasping word meanings) but, rather, what an inhuman central processing unit in a computer would be doing (rote matching and responding). For some reason you claim it matters that the man, "try as he might", just can't understand Chinese and I have pointed out that the man's trying is irrelevant to this demonstration BECAUSE the man's lack of understanding of Chinese is already stipulated. He is not trying to understand Chinese in his role in that room and, if he were trying (because, say, humans are humans and each behaves differently with some in the room daydreaming and some trying to figure out meanings while performing the matching), it would be totally irrelevant to his role in the room. The point of the CR is to demonstrate that understanding is more than just correct answers (a la the Turing Test) and that whatever the CPU is doing, it cannot count as what we mean by understanding. So the man IS functioning in that room as a CPU. He is not supposed to do anything more than a CPU would do and trying to understand would be something more. Now if you still think that the man-in-the-room's trying to understand Chinese is relevant to the CR, it is for you to show that that is what Searle intended. It's very nice that you provide a link to the 1980 article (which I have previously read, but thank you anyway). The point, however, is that you need to support YOUR claim that the man's trying is integral to the point of the thought experiment rather than incidental to it and that Searle, himself, made that claim. You need to back up your claim that Searle meant the man-in-the-room's role to be understood as more than the computational mechanism whose function he is replacing. I don't see support for that claim anywhere in that article so if you think it's there, please identify the passage. The best way is to cut and paste it into your next post here and indicate where in the text it is to be found so we can read it in context. Thanks. SWM ========================================= Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/