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> whether the system as a whole understands Chinese. "The system" isn't the kind of thing that understands. If I give n people a letter each and a number indic
by bobthechef 5y ago
> whether the system as a whole understands Chinese.
"The system" isn't the kind of thing that understands. If I give n people a letter each and a number indicating the position the letter should occupy on some grid, it does not follow that the group knows the sentence because groups are not knowing subjects. If they arrange the letters on the grid, then each individual person in the group now knows the sentence when they read it.
Only individual knowing agents know and understand. Abusing the definition of "knowing" or "understanding" doesn't help clarify anything. All it does is lead to equivocation.
- hackinthebochs 5y agoYou could say the same thing about neurons and brains. Clearly something is wrong with this argument.
- mannykannot 5y agoIndeed - there are, in fact, several things wrong with it. Firstly, it is a circular argument in which an unargued-for intuition - '"The system" isn't the kind of thing that understands' - is used in trying to justify that intuition. Secondly, no-one is suggesting, and Strong AI certainly does not imply, that the utterly simple 'system' here is capable of understanding anything. The fact that it does not proves nothing. Thirdly, it is irrelevant (a variant of the homunculus fallacy) to see any significance in what the actors understand and when they do so, as they are being employed to act as unthinking automata. Replace each of them with a simple mechanism for placing a letter in a predetermined spot, and you have an equivalent system, also mindless, that is equally useless for demonstrating anything about the feasibility of Strong AI.