From: mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott)
Subject: Re: The Challenge
Keywords: Searle, Chinese Room
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept., New Haven, CT 06520-2158
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 15:31:56 GMT

  In article <1992Apr2.181357.25444@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
  >In article <1992Apr1.150750.9618@cs.yale.edu> mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott) writes:

  >>Michael Gemar (in e-mail) suggested that the CR was not, after all,
  >>the issue, but syntax vs. semantics was.  Christopher Green made the
  >>same point, in a posting I seem to have misplaced.  
  >
  >I'm sorry not to have gotten back to you Drew, but I think you take my comments
  >out of context.  As I have argued *repeatedly* in this forum, the Chinese Room
  >is merely an attempt at providing a *demonstration* for *one* axiom of Searle's
  >*formal* argument.  The Chinese Room example, in and of itself, is *not* the
  >argument.  The *formal* argument can be found in his _Scientific American_
  >article, or in _Minds, Brains, and Science_.

I'm not sure why you label this the "formal" argument.  It consists of
lists of items labeled "Axioms" (if I remember correctly), but they
aren't very axiomatic, and most of the work is in the long paragraphs
of exegesis between the "axioms."

In any case, I take it you're agreeing that the "formal" argument can
be decoupled from the Chinese Room argument.

[I wonder what you mean by "demonstration."  I fear that you mean it
in the sense of "demo for site visitors."]

  >As I have also noted recently, I am no longer convinced that the Chinese Room 
  >example, as a demonstration of the axiom that syntax can't yield semantics,
  >appropriately deals with the Systems Reply.  This is *not* to say that I
  >necessarily have been converted to Functionalism, as I think the axiom is
  >supported by the distinction made by linguists and philosophers between
  >syntax and semantics, *and* by the fact that AI advocates offer no
  >explanation of how the latter arises from the former, except faith.

We've been around this block a few times.  I think that the AI types
accept that syntax is distinct from semantics.  The question is
whether semantics is adequately modeled as correlations between states
of an organism and states of its environment.  "Faith" is not required
to verify that such correlations exist; faith is, I agree, required to
get us from that notion of semantics to the full-blooded experience of
meaningfulness by human beings.  But faith is required for many
beliefs in cognitive science, no matter what camp you're in.

  [me:]
  >> but of course if Searle knew anything about computation we
  >>wouldn't be discussing the Chinese Room in the first place.
  >
  >"But if the Strong-AI crowd knew anything about syntax and semantics, we
  >wouldn't be discussing computer minds in the first place."  Insults can
  >cut both ways, and rarely advance discussion.   

That's true.  Let me try to state the point noninsultingly: I have a
lot of respect for Searle, when he sticks to his home turf of the
"logic of introspection" (a phrase I just made up).  But it's obvious
that he has never taken a course on operating systems, and that his
style of rebutting arguments against computationalists would be quite
different if he had.

                                             -- Drew