<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Jan 9, 2010, Gordon Swobe wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">Human operators ascribe meanings to the symbols their computers manipulate. </span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Computers ascribe meaning to symbols too, if they didn't they would treat all symbols the same. They don't. And if I had written the quote attributed to Searle where he talks about the meaning of meaningless symbols I would have been deeply embarrassed. </div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">It's an understandable mistake; after all it sure *looks* like computers understand the meanings. </span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>And it sure *looks* like humans understand the meanings too, but who knows.</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">The question of strong AI is: "How can we make computers actually understand the meanings and not merely appear to understand the meanings?"<br></span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>If the computer did understand the meaning you think the machine would continue to operate exactly as it did before, back when it didn't have the slightest understanding of anything. So, given that understanding is a completely useless property why should computer scientists even bother figuring out ways to make a machine understand? Haven't they got anything better to do?</div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark</div><div><br></div></div></body></html>