5HC : Chinese boxes or tea chests?

James Wynn · 02 Feb 2005, 11:14 · from 2005-February.txt.gz

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From: thewynns at earthlink.net (James Wynn)
Date: Wed Feb  2 11:14:29 2005
Subject: (urth) 5HC : Chinese boxes or tea chests?
References: <BAY102-F37033366E9C283E375E64A867E0 at phx.gbl><20050202144646.96438.qmail at web50302.mail.yahoo.com>
	<1f7617370502020939286e70a5 at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <029201c5095b$6a0d5620$4c1e4b0a at vcorp.ad.vrsn.com>

>Behviorism[2] refers to the ontological position that no such thing
>as "consciousness" exists.
>Behaviorism[1] seems to-me a legitimate and scientific position.
>Behaviorism[2] seems to-me to have been concocted as a parody
> of behaviorism[1].

I don't know the whole history of Behaviorism[2], but wasn't it most
popularized in B.F. Skinner's "Beyond Freedom & Dignity"? He is hardly a
fringe personality in the science of Behavorialism. Skinner argued that
problems of human overpopulation could be handled by the emerging
'technologies of behavior" which in order to be fully developed had to be
sundered from the notion of human "free will", that an "automaton" resides
within us (as opposed to the understanding that we are the sum of Nature and
Nurture). There are lots of critics of Skinner (count me with them), but
none that I know of do so with empirical data.

>Searle proposes a much more limited test and says, "No
>matter what the results, we must conclude that the Room
>does not 'know Chinese,' because we know _a priori_ that
>it does not."

I agree with this. The Searle's conclusion (and definitions) are implicit in
his thought experiment. But the argument against him always comes down to:
"Well, how do you know that *humans* "think" in the superlative manner
Searle's analogy  seems to presume they do?" But that sounds like a tilt
toward B.F. Skinner to me.

I think Wolfe has posed a much more complex scenario. Rather than building
his simulated personalities from scratch, he has them imprinted directly
from a human pattern and says "Are they people?" Lemur says "no". He calls
them 'ghosts'. Sort of moving, monuments to people long dead. (And then he
found out that HE was such a monument as well). Mr. Million seems to agree
with Lemur.

Rose say "yes", because she already WAS a person.  She's not a fraud,
mimicking personality.

V.R.T. is trying to *become* Marsch but does not seem to have succeeded
because Number Five and his jailers seem to see right through him....but if
he got away with it, would he BE Marsch?? Does this question not strike to
the heart of the Turing "imitation game"?

~ Crush

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