[ExI] Wernicke's aphasia and the CRA

[Gordon Swobe]

Hiya Damien,

> >Some Chinese guy comes along and says "squiggle" so
> Cram dutifully looks it up in his mental look up table and
> replies "squaggle". ... But Cram has no idea what "squiggle"
> or "squaggle" mean. From his point of view, he's no
> different from the Wernicke aphasiac who speaks nonsense
> with proper syntax.<
> 
> Leaving aside the absurd scale problems with this analogy
> (the guy equals a neuron with very slow synaptic connections
> to other neurons),

No, perhaps you missed the earlier messages. 

Some of Searle's critics argued that the man in the room represents a neuron or some other small part of a larger system and that his lack of understanding means nothing -- after all he's not the system and perhaps the system has understanding. Searle replied "Fine, let the man internalize the entire room."

That's my man (android?) Cram. He runs a formal program in is brain as described in the paragraph of mine that you quoted above.

No Chinese Room. No system. Just Cram.  

> if this could be instantiated in an memory-augmented brain I'd 
> expect that Cram would finally have an epiphanic moment of 
> illumination and find that he *did* understand Chinese. 

I'd like to expect it too, but I need an argument to justify that expectation of an "epiphanic moment of illumination". Short of an act of god, or some other mystical explanation, how exactly does such a marvelous thing happen? What awakens Pinocchio?


-gts