[ExI] Wernicke's aphasia and the CRA

[Gordon Swobe]

--- On Mon, 12/7/09, John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> What makes Searle's Chinese Room such a stupid thought
> experiment is its conclusion: The little man doesn't
> understand anything therefore the entire Chinese Room
> doesn't understand anything. Pretty dumb.

Searle replies that the man could in principle memorize the syntactic rule-book, thus internalizing the formal program and the entire the room/system. On Searle's view such a man would still lack understanding of the Chinese symbols.

In my discussions on the philosophy list, I have nicknamed that man "Cram" (CRA man) and contrasted him with an ordinary bloke named Sam.

Sam has intrinsic intentionality (philosophy-speak for "the about-ness of consciousness", or for our purposes here, "conscious understanding of the meanings of the symbols"). Cram, says Searle, does not.

-gts