[ExI] Wernicke's aphasia and the CRA

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/12/8 John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>:
> On Dec 7, 2009, at 3:20 PM, Gordon Swobe wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> Then either the little man in the room is lying about his linguistic
> inadequacy or he is suffering from multiple personality disorder because it
> is clear that somebody or something in that room knows Chinese.

No, the man could still be completely ignorant of Chinese. Chinese is
difficult, but you could probably get a patient idiot to carry out a
simpler computation in his head following mechanical rules, but have
no idea what he was doing.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou