How Helen Keller used syntactic semantics to escape from a Chinese Room

A computer can come to understand natural language the same way Helen Keller did: by using “syntactic semantics”—a theory of how syntax can suffice for semantics, i.e., how semantics for natural language can be provided by means of computational symbol manipulation. This essay considers real-life approximations of Chinese Rooms, focusing on Helen Keller’s experiences growing up deaf and blind, locked in a sort of Chinese Room yet learning how to communicate with the outside world. Using the SNePS computational knowledge-representation system, the essay analyzes Keller’s belief that learning that “everything has a name” was the key to her success, enabling her to “partition” her mental concepts into mental representations of: words, objects, and the naming relations between them. It next looks at Herbert Terrace’s theory of naming, which is akin to Keller’s, and which only humans are supposed to be capable of. The essay suggests that computers at least, and perhaps non-human primates, are also capable of this kind of naming.

Re-Entering the Chinese Room

Minds and Machines -     

A Logical Hole in the Chinese Room

Searle’s Chinese Room Argument (CRA) has been the object of great interest in the philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence and cognitive science since its initial presentation in ‘Minds, Brains and Programs’ in 1980. It is by no means an overstatement to assert that it has been a main focus of attention for philosophers and computer scientists of many stripes. It is then especially interesting to note that relatively little has been said about the detailed logic of the argument, whatever significance Searle intended CRA to have. The problem with the CRA is that it involves a very strong modal claim, the truth of which is both unproved and highly questionable. So it will be argued here that the CRA does not prove what it was intended to prove.

Searle's Chinese Box: Debunking the Chinese Room Argument

John Searle's Chinese room argument is perhaps the most influential andwidely cited argument against artificial intelligence (AI). Understood astargeting AI proper – claims that computers can think or do think– Searle's argument, despite its rhetorical flash, is logically andscientifically a dud. Advertised as effective against AI proper, theargument, in its main outlines, is an ignoratio elenchi. It musterspersuasive force fallaciously by indirection fostered by equivocaldeployment of the phrase "strong AI" and reinforced by equivocation on thephrase "causal powers" (at least) equal to those of brains." On a morecarefully crafted understanding – understood just to targetmetaphysical identification of thought with computation ("Functionalism"or "Computationalism") and not AI proper the argument is still unsound,though more interestingly so. It's unsound in ways difficult for high church– "someday my prince of an AI program will come" – believersin AI to acknowledge without undermining their high church beliefs. The adhominem bite of Searle's argument against the high church persuasions of somany cognitive scientists, I suggest, largely explains the undeserved reputethis really quite disreputable argument enjoys among them.     

A Logical Hole the Chinese Room Avoids

Searle’s Chinese room argument (CRA) was recently charged as being unsound because it makes a logical error. It is shown here that this charge is based on a misinterpretation of the modal scope of a major premise of the CRA and that the CRA does not commit the logical error with which it is charged.     

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste

Right now CEOs and board members are under the microscope. The typical CIO, usually struggling for higher visibility and true C-level status, is now in the enviable position of being just outside the scope of C-level witch hunts. At present, the CIO is a functionary—the plumber-in-chief! Previously, we would have cringed at these characterizations, but when there are water shortages, the plumber has great power. The authors describe the new role CIOs will increasingly find themselves in and how to navigate it.     

Never go to a client meeting without a prototype [software prototyping]

We bear a lot about bow collaboration is the key to implementing the right requirements. But how can clients and developers achieve this collaboration? The author gives the benefit of his experience on how prototypes and professionalism make this happen.     

打造绿色机房解决方案

“节能环保”是社会发展不可阻挡的主旋律,也是各企业必须要达到的目标.能耗是数据中心最大的成本所在,因此数据中心的能耗是企业节能减排、降低运营成本的关键所在.     

Was Foucault a plagiarist? Hip-hop sampling and academic citation

This article argues that comparing academic citation and hip-hop sampling can help students become better users of sourcework. I contend that sampling and academic writing share a goal of building new work in response to existing sources and that this goal is obscured by lawsuits that reduce sampling to theft by applying to sound a copyright regulation system designed for print. Both sampling and citing seek to build new compositions by working from sources, yet academic citation systems preserve textual ownership through attribution while sampling often guards or disguises its sources. These different stances in regard to authorship and ownership belie the values shared by the two systems.     

Room layout estimation in indoor environment: a review

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Scene understanding from the single image of an indoor scene is identified as a challenging task. This involves interpreting the assessment of multiple scene...     

Gender and Turn Allocation in a Thai Chat Room

As Internet use continues to grow worldwide, its potential to facilitate e-commerce and international trade, especially among small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), is well recognized. However, formidable barriers in language and word processing have to be overcome before significant uptake of such computer-mediated communication by SMEs can be realized. A pragmatic methodology to enable multilingual e-mail communication is introduced, in a prototype system called "TigerTalk for SMEs." This approach has been endorsed by the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) as the Multilingual International Trade Project. The first phase of needs and feasibility assessment is reported in eight case studies.     

Room for a Thousand Flowers to Bloom

Does concentrated commercial leadership or dispersed commercial leadership more efficaciously explore value? Concentrated or dispersed commercial leadership describes whether a small or large range of firms, respectively, can commercialize potential services and products for a similar, though uncertain, technological opportunity. This is both a philosophical and a practical question. The philosophical viewpoint questions whether there's merit to letting a thousand flowers bloom. The practical viewpoint questions what happens when the market lacks room for such variety.     

The Chinese Room Argument Reconsidered: Essentialism,Indeterminacy, and Strong AI

I argue that John Searle's (1980) influential Chinese room argument (CRA) against computationalism and strong AI survives existing objections, including Block's (1998) internalized systems reply, Fodor's (1991b) deviant causal chain reply, and Hauser's (1997) unconscious content reply. However, a new ``essentialist' reply I construct shows that the CRA as presented by Searle is an unsound argument that relies on a question-begging appeal to intuition. My diagnosis of the CRA relies on an interpretation of computationalism as a scientific theory about the essential nature of intentional content; such theories often yield non-intuitive results in non-standard cases, and so cannot be judged by such intuitions. However, I further argue that the CRA can be transformed into a potentially valid argument against computationalism simply by reinterpreting it as an indeterminacy argument that shows that computationalism cannot explain the ordinary distinction between semantic content and sheer syntactic manipulation, and thus cannot be an adequate account of content. This conclusion admittedly rests on the arguable but plausible assumption that thought content is interestingly determinate. I conclude that the viability of computationalism and strong AI depends on their addressing the indeterminacy objection, but that it is currently unclear how this objection can be successfully addressed.     

The Chinese Room: Visualization and Interaction to Understand and Correct Ambiguous Machine Translation

We present The Chinese Room , a visualization interface that allows users to explore and interact with a multitude of linguistic resources in order to decode and correct poor machine translations. The target users of The Chinese Room are not bilingual and are not familiar with machine translation technologies. We investigate the ability of our system to assist such users in decoding and correcting faulty machine translations. We found that by collaborating with our application, end-users can overcome many difficult translation errors and disambiguate translated passages that were otherwise baffling. We also examine the utility of our system to machine translation researchers. Anecdotal evidence suggests that The Chinese Room can help such researchers develop better machine translation systems.     

计算机机房的供电和接地系统

介绍了计算机系统对电源质量的要求，阐述了目前机房普遍采用的供电方式和配电要求，以及计算机机房的接地技术。     

分户热计量系统室温模糊预测控制

研究室温控制问题时,针对分户热计量系统中室温控制具有滞后性、时变性、复杂性,难以建立精确数学模型的特点,为了按需要改变室温,提出一种室温模糊预测控制策略.采用BP网络建立预测模型,对采暖房间升(降)一定温度所需要的时间进行预测,并通过模糊控器对采暖房间温度进行控制,克服了传统室温控制方式不能对升(降)温时间进行预测的缺点,并进行仿真.仿真结果表明,预测模型的时间误差小,预测控制策略具有适应能力、鲁棒性好等特点.     

浅析UPS电源在网络机房的使用

网络机房承载着网络系统信息交换和存储业务,为网络上的用户提供全面的数据资源共享服务和各种网络服务,那么具有良好供电能力的UPS电源则是基本保障的前提。本文从UPS电源的初步认识入手,重点讨论了UPS电源在网络机房的使用注意事项及其日常维护。     

浅谈县级疾控中心数据中心机房的规划和设计

本文从机房的概况、总体规划、总体设计三个方面,浅谈如何因地制宜地及早规划和设计绿色节能与合理化的县级疾病预防控制机构的小型数据中心机房。