[ExI] Wernicke's aphasia and the CRA

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, Dec 07, 2009 at 06:23:35PM -0800, Gordon Swobe wrote:

> 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."

Fine, let's the cow jump over the Moon.

I mean, it only takes a few megagee or so, to achieve enough
momentum to overcome hypersonic drag at ground level. Of 
course, the cow will get homogenized by the acceleration, 
and then turned into shocked plasma before its lunar flyby.
 
> 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.

So you want to simulate a Chinese-speaking person.
So first you use paper, which doesn't work (the Sun would burn out
before you can get the system to comprehend the first
sentence, not that there are enough tree on the planet
anyway). Not content with that impossibility, you want 
to represent at least 10^17 bits nevermind the nontrivial 
transition function over them between some guy's ears
who can't even handle seven thoughts without starting
dropping them.

Where do they grow such fine idiots like Searle?
 
> No Chinese Room. No system. Just Cram.  

Just omit Cram. Works even better now.
 
> > 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?

What makes you think the guy even knows what he's doing?

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE