tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1196651674832836865.post7495030023749984360..comments2023-10-20T06:31:29.919-05:00Comments on The Logic of Long Distance: Searle's Chinese Room and Intelligent TrainingJeff Edmondshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11840746835757479590noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1196651674832836865.post-48620936909355623342011-11-13T15:21:55.708-06:002011-11-13T15:21:55.708-06:00Hey mileage man,
Thanks for the comment. I will h...Hey mileage man,<br /><br />Thanks for the comment. I will have to let Scout answer this one, since this is his post, not mine! I admit very little expertise when it comes to the Chinese room or Searle's philosophy. I do agree with you that this connection is a bit of a stretch, and your comments help to clarify the thought experiment quite a bit.<br /><br />[I have to admit that I find the thought experiment bizarre myself, and I am unsure exactly what it demonstrates!]Jeff Edmondshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11840746835757479590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1196651674832836865.post-69116178750784482252011-11-13T02:31:46.306-06:002011-11-13T02:31:46.306-06:00It occurs to me that it might have been a bit conf...It occurs to me that it might have been a bit confusing what I was trying to get at with the above comment, so I should probably come clean that yes, the post might have been motivated as a sarcastic commentary on the lack of a direct connection between the Chinese Room scenario and the value of thinking critically about training programs. However, I am just trying to be playful, not critical. Even many professional philosophers misunderstand/oversimplify this thought experiment. For example, I think that Searle himself is guilty of this, making essentially the same conceptual mistake which I think Scout also makes - identifying the man in the room (or in this case the runner) as the locus of putative consciousness in the Chinese Room example. But that's just the wrong place to look... of course this doesn't help our runner who is still left in the dark. ;) Anyway, that's what I was trying to point out.mileage mannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1196651674832836865.post-60796615445884359482011-11-13T02:25:02.184-06:002011-11-13T02:25:02.184-06:00Searle's argument is that there is no place fo...Searle's argument is that there is no place for understanding in a purely formal/syntactic process, because obviously the man in the room doesn't know Chinese! <br /><br />However, Searle's example is a bit misleading. Linear look-up tables won't allow our computer to pass off as a human (i.e. won't let our man who doesn't know Chinese pass off as knowing Chinese), because the essentially infinite variety of conversations that our language allows and the dependence of the allowable responses on the whole conversation mean the look-up table for responses would have to be infinitely long. A better method would be to have the man in the room adjust valves controlling the flow of water through an enormous array of pipes in a way that represents linguistic input into a neural system. He could then monitor the output activity of certain pipes in order to determine his response. Of course, it is not the man that knows Chinese, it is this brain made of pipes. In other words, Searle has us focus on the man, which in this bizarre scenario is the wrong place to focus. It is counterintuitive that these pipes (or any mechanical system) could constitute a MIND, but now we recognize the circularity of Searle's argument. It is not that rule following is somehow fundamentally insufficient as an explanation of intentionality, but rather that we just haven't yet forged the 'explanatory gap' (that is, we haven't yet explained how mental phenomena are really just physical phenomena). <br /><br />Anyway, my point is ultimately a playful one: there are certain sets of rules you could follow in virtue of which you could indirectly instantiate a system which understands a training methodology, without yourself understanding it. But those aren't the types of programs you'll find in Daniels, etc., and wouldn't necessarily involve any running (demons exchanging slips of paper, etc.). In any case, you are probably better off just achieving understanding the simple and direct way - knowing the purpose of your training!mileage mannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1196651674832836865.post-69041476223581643812011-08-03T17:59:46.202-05:002011-08-03T17:59:46.202-05:00thanks, scout.thanks, scout.acehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17240130164195040602noreply@blogger.com