On Dec 30, 2007, at 7:18 PM, Ben Franksen wrote:
You seem to be content to be cheated. You even seem to believe that there /is no/ cheating involved, even if I program the computer so that you just /think/ it has emotions.
Remember the chinese room!
Urgh, I was going to stay out of this, but you made me remember the stupid Chinese Room! I know it from Penrose's account of it in `The Emperor's New Mind', and while he at least goes on to admit it's a weak case, the fact that he even wasted a couple pages on it rather put me off the rest of the book. If you make a box that can parse Chinese with some functional understanding, and it doesn't matter that there's a person inside because he's strictly following a procedure and thus essentially mechanical -- then of course it makes no difference at all whether this person knows Chinese. You may decide for yourself whether the functional understanding of Chinese is intelligence or not, but the man inside is huge, stinking red herring. Donn Cave, donn@drizzle.com