INDIVIDIUAL UNDERSTANDING

A detailed Summary of INDIVIDIUAL UNDERSTANDING

I agree with functionalists, specifically the strong Artificial Intelligence (AI) camp, concerning the concept of understanding. While John Searle poses a strong non-functionalist case in his AChinese Room@ argument, I find that his definition of Ato understand@ falls short and hampers his point. I criticize his defense that understanding rests on a standardized knowledge of meaning, but not before outlining the general background of the issue.

Functionalists define thought and mental states in terms of input and output. They claim that what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch (input) creates a mental state or belief, and that particular mental state in turn creates our reaction (output). If I see it=s raining outside, I believe that if I go outside I will get wet, and therefore I take an umbrella with me. The functionalists define a mental state strictly through its cause and effect relationships, through its function.

This thinking leads to the conclusion that the human brain is little more than a big, complex computer. All we humans do is take input, process it, and accordingly create output, just like a computer. In fact, functionalists who support strong AI go so far as to say that an appropria

While strong AI claims that a machine can understand just as a human understands, Searle himself disagrees. He claims that a strictly input-output system, such as a computer is, cannot understand anything, nor does it explain humans= ability to understand. In criticizing strong AI, Searle creates his famous AChinese Room@ argument: suppose that Searle was locked in a room with a large batch of Chinese writing. Here, Searle knows absolutely no Chinese, but he does understand English fluently. For Searle, AChinese writing is just so many meaningless squiggles@ (355). Then, someone slips under the door another set of Chinese writing, but along with it an English rulebook. The rulebook shows Searle how to simply correlate one Chinese symbol with another, identifying them only by shape and not by meaning. Searle then strings together his meaningless Chinese symbols according to the English rulebook, and slips his Awriting@ under the door. More Chinese symbols come in, and in response Searle simply pieces new ones together and sends them back out.

I find the functionalists to be more convincing, although I do not agree with them entirely. I do believe that our brains are similar to highly complex computers. Our senses provide us with input, and this input is stored as memory. As we live our lives, we constantly record input; we note and remember everything we experience. I put my hand in fire, and I soon feel intense pain; I record the experience through a sensory perception of it. When we come across a specific experience again, we recall the old data. I see another fire, I recall the old input of touching fire and burning myself, I remember not being happy with that so my new output now is to walk away from the fire. My brain functions as a constant, complex computer, always recording input and consequently creating new output.

Without this knowledge of meaning, Searle continues, true understanding does not really exist. A[I]f we accept the systems reply, then it is hard to see how we avoid saying that stomach, heart, liver, and so on are all understanding subsystems . . .@ (360). Searle argues that if we only need an input, a process, and an output to attribute understanding, many objects would be said to have understanding. The stomach certainly has input (undigested food), a process (chemical breakdown and the numerous processes it includes), and an output (sugar to the blood, protein the muscles, waste to the anus, etc.). But has the stomach ever been said to understand anything at all?

AIt is a characteristic of human beings= story understanding capacity that they can answer questions about [a] story even though the information they give was never explicitly stated in the story. . . . [Strong

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Approximate Word count = 1835
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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