From: Woody Long (ironanchorpress@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Jan 19 2006 - 13:34:02 MST
> [Original Message]
> From: Richard Loosemore <rpwl@lightlink.com>
> To: <sl4@sl4.org>
> I will try to explain why I say this, and address the points you make.
>
> First, it is difficult to argue about what *exactly* Searle was claiming
> in his original paper, because in an important sense there was no such
> thing as "exactly what he said" -- he used vague language and subtle
> innuendos at certain crucial points of the argument, so if you try to
> pin down the fine print you find that it all starts to get very slippery.
-------------------
Well there IS an *exactly* with all else being externally added, such as
UTM and the mind-on-top-of-mind.
Here it is clearly, in Searle's words, in his 1999 Institute of
International Studies, UC Berkeley "Conversations With History" Interview
-- ............................................................................ ............ "Well, it's such a simple argument that I find myself somewhat embarrassed to be constantly repeating it, but you can say it in a couple of seconds. Here's how it goes. Whenever somebody gives you a theory of the mind, always try it out on yourself. Always ask, how would it work for me? Now if somebody tells you, "Well, really your mind is just a computer program, so when you understand something, you're just running the steps in the program," try it out. Take some area which you don't understand and imagine you carry out the steps in the computer program. Now, I don't understand Chinese. I'm hopeless at it. I can't even tell Chinese writing from Japanese writing. So I imagine that I'm locked in a room with a lot of Chinese symbols (that's the database) and I've got a rule book for shuffling the symbols (that's the program) and I get Chinese symbols put in the room through a slit, and those are questions put to me in Chinese. And then I look up in the rule book what I'm supposed to do with these symbols and then I give them back symbols and unknown to me, the stuff that comes in are questions and the stuff I give back are answers. Now, if you imagine that the programmers get good at writing the rule book and I get good at shuffling the symbols, my answers are fine. They look like answers of a native Chinese [speaker]. They ask me questions in Chinese, I answer the questions in Chinese. All the same, I don't understand a word of Chinese. And the bottom line is, if I don't understand Chinese on the basis of implementing the computer program for understanding Chinese, then neither does any other ***digital computer*** on that basis, because no computer's got anything that I don't have. That's the power of the computer, it just shuffles symbols. It just manipulates symbols. So I am a computer for understanding Chinese, but I don't understand a word of Chinese." ............................................................................ ............ There is his precise argument in black and white text, ready for *entailment acquisition* by our strong AIs. Forget the topic of UTM. He's NOT talking about that, he's talking about ***digital computers*** PERIOD, meaning all the dumb card shuffling, simulatory, non-language understanding "classical computers" circa 1950 - 2005 including rule-based expert systems. And what he is saying is that these ***classical digital computers*** of his age function EXACTLY as the ENGLISH MAN in the Room does. That is ALL he is saying - it's an apt analogy: Neither the ENGLISH MAN nor the classical digital computer is actually "understanding the cognitive capability" being performed, they both are performing merely as dumb card-shuffling, simulatory, non-understanding, classical digital computers, and can NEVER be considered strong AI conscious machines. But hey, what do you expect from us?? It's only the first age, the classical computer age, of 1950-2005, an age obviously for the building of the basic tools - WP, DBMS, OS, etc. etc. - and techniques, where the mantra was "forget dumb, get it done." But therein lay the seed of the next computer age, of the conscious machine with human-like intelligence and self-awareness, of the "interpersonal computer" (IC) that we interact with just as we do with humans, as opposed to the PCs of the classical computer age. Hey Rome was built overnight either! We will get there and soon. But how shall we detirmine that a system is in this new post-classical strong AI conscious machine product class. You tell me. This is the issue of this "3 Real CM" debate which I find very interesting for my work. You have proposed a Question Challenge as a way. Ben Goertzel has proposed a Pascal Challenge as a way. Both of these are Searle Tests for me. You are both saying "a CHINESE MAN (human-level consciousness) can understand the incoming language can of the task and perform it. How about your so-called machine consciousness that equals human-level consciousness? As such should it not be able to do these tasks as supporting evidence that it is in fact a strong AI conscious machine? Or is your system in fact just another dumb card-shuffling, simulatory, non-understanding (of input language), classical digital computer system or ENGLISH MAN in the Room, that fails the Searle Test, and will never be considered a strong AI conscious machine. So both of you are giving me a "Searle Test" (as formulated), and since I believe in this evaluation/testing methodology I will be glad to look into it and respond to these Challenges ASP. But first I want to hammer out the nature of the evaluation test you have given me, and what we can agree to about them, in posts like these. So we get the Searle argument boiled down to a single proposition - A simulatory, dumb card-shuffling classical digital computer with no understanding of the cognitive task it is performing, can never be considered a strong AI conscious machine. On this one aspect of the Searle Argument, I believe you and I will agree. Ken Woody Long http://www.artificial-lifeforms-lab.blogspot.com/
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