Go Fly A Kite

David Papineau reviews John Searle for the TLS. I mention this only as an excuse to point to a "common sense"  ('cause Searle is big on common sense) refutation of Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment (well, actually, a refutation of Searle's reply to the systems reply to Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment; still, by extension...). You might call it the "Chinese Kite" thought experiment.

(Via Arts & Letters Daily.)

Comments

[Robert Link]

I prefer a less common-sense oriented answer: deconstruct "to understand." Given that the deconstruction allows for a wide range of qualifying acts, Searle in his Chinese Room might best be argued as exhibiting one kind of understanding.

But wait...

"...hackers who anthropomorphize are expressing not a vitalistic view of program behavior but a mechanistic view of human behavior."

In that context, I'd say, "Sure, Searle in his CR 'understands' the input and has passed the Turing test. Big deal. Like, us meat-machines are so different?"

Peace.