Can computers understand?Can understanding be simulated by computers?

[quantumcarl]

I apologize for not acknowledging the contributions of Tournesol who has been with this discussion from the top. Thank you "T".

 

[quantumcarl]

I have to admit that I only found John Searle's Chinese Room because I was googling for examples of a China room.

A China room is a room decorated in the style known as Chinoiserie. Chinoiserie is a french term for the type of painting the Chinese did for centuries before they even knew of an outside world. It is axionometric in nature and picutures village life, fishing, nature scenes and anscestors and deities. It is painted in gold guilding, bronzing powders, sometimes raised, on exotic red, black and green backgrounds. Then it is laqueured around 100 times for depth and its sometimes all done on linen finished furniture or panels.

There are only 4 China Rooms in the world. I thought one was in the Brighton Pavilion but couldn't find reference to it. I just finished designing and producing some of the panels for the 4th-only China Room in the Bishop's Gate Estate in London.

There are over 40 Chinoiserie panels for that 16x16 foot room. Its all a deep antique red with the highlights of gold figures and islands and mountains etc...

Even after 2 months working on this project I don't understand the original techniques the chinese used to arrive at the "chinoiserie". And I don't understand the significance of the images they used other than the fact that they depict family life and social survival techniques.

When I found the John Searle Chinese Room Thought Experiment, I thought they'd used the wrong terminology when they tried to determine if the Chinese Room "understood" chinese.

To me, the room was able to interpret the Chinese charactures. It had an ability to translate one character into other characters that related to the original.

Understanding is far too rare a state of mind and therefore a word that must be used sparingly with sincerity.

It is more often that not that the word understanding is used in this sentence... " I do not understand" rather than "I understand".

The former statement is suspect to scrutiny, or should be, when people hear it because, as I have already stated, understanding is a rare state of mind. And this is why I would petition the originator, John Searle, of the Chinese Room T X to look a little closer at, and research his use of the word "understanding".

The word understanding has already been diluted to the point of no return. When used to describe computing it will be the end of its true meaning which is rooted in shared consciousness, caring and compassionate listening. When it is applied to the function of a computer, millions of people who still see understanding as a compassionate act and a sharing of points of view or awarenesses will slowly succum to an artifical, mis-representation of understanding... for $9.99 a minute.