Subject:
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Re: Design
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Mon, 5 Dec 2005 08:50:03 GMT
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Original-From:
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dan miller <danbmil99@yahoo.+Spamcake+com>
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Viewed:
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1119 times
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--- steve <sjbaker1@airmail.net> wrote:
...
> Searle's own counter to the argument that the
> man+the rulebook is an intelligent system is that
> the man could memorize the rulebook and step out
> of the room able to speak fluent chinese without
> begin able to understand a word of what he was saying
> in response to chinese questioning.
>
> This would leave use with a strange situation.
>
> On leaving the room, the man would be able to
> behave as a chinese speaker - but he conscious
> 'English' self would have no idea what he was
> saying.
>
> It would be like having two completely separate
> individuals without one skull. Neither would be
> able to access knowledge that the other had.
> Neither would be able to speak the other's language.
>
> The situation would appear to have complete symmetry.
Except for the fact that the Chinese guy could only understand one word
every million years or so.
What Serle (annoyingly, yes!) fails to comprehend is that a human being who
miraculously had the ability to emulate a Turing machine, which in turn is
running a program able to simulate a human mind, is not the human mind he is
simulating.
Humans who have had their corpus colossum severed (for severe epilepsy) are
effectively two centers of consciousness in one body. Tests have been done
where they let the left hand touch a toothbrush, and later identify it from
a bunch of objects, but the right hand (which is associated with the left
side of the brain, and speech), cannot access the information. This is
exactly the state of affairs in Searle's absurd thought experiment. (absurd
because of the performance problem of a human memorizing enough rules to run
a complex program -- but I'll ignore that for the sake of argument). If I
ask something in Chinese of the "wrong" person -- in this case, the
english-speaking host -- he will know nothing about it, because he has not
learned Chinese. But the Chinese person, who the English person is somehow
emulating, can talk Chinese just fine.
Here's a concrete example of a similar state of affairs that can exist
today: A Macintosh has a PC emulator running in a window. On the (virtual)
PC, you open a word processor, edit a document, and save it to disk. Then
you open a word processor on the Mac, and attempt to open the file. It
won't open. (maybe you can't even find it, or if you can, it's in the wrong
format). Hmm, does that say anything about the relative merits of PC's
versus Mac's? Does it mean anything at all about their qualitative
capabilities? No, it means essentially nothing. The PC could emulate the
Mac, and the result would be the same. That's the nature of the beast when
it comes to Universal Turing Machines. If Searle (and the legions of
philosophy students who actually believe this crap -- I've met a couple)
spent some time understanding the Church/Turing thesis, they wouldn't be so
confused by a simple sleight-of-hand parlor trick, and the world would be a
better place.
It's all so silly, because it's just going to happen, and then we can argue
about it forever. Or until they get annoyed.
__________________________________________
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Design
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| Dan, I wouldn't have argued it quite that way, but then I wouldn't have been so eloquent. On the human mind and simulation (mimicry) of it, I have three observations: Intelligent behavior has a goal (easy to mimic) Intelligence has an agenda (not (...) (19 years ago, 5-Dec-05, to lugnet.robotics)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Design
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| (...) That cannot happen - in the thought experiment, the Chinese rule book is unaware that the person running the rules speaks only english. Searle's own counter to the argument that the man+the rulebook is an intelligent system is that the man (...) (19 years ago, 5-Dec-05, to lugnet.robotics)
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