Can Computers Understand? :: essays research papers

Can Computers understand?1) Thinking is the hallmark of understanding.2) Only particular(a) machines rotter think.3) If something depose think it can understand.4) Only special machines that can think can understand.5) "Mental" states and their resulting actions ar products of thecenter of activity (brain).6) To understand, thoughts essential be produced by the brain.7) A computers mental states and events are controlled by a program.8) The program is not a product of the computer.9) A computer does not produce "thoughts" in its brain.10) A computer cannot understand.John Searle addresses the point of the susceptibility of ArtificialIntelligence (AI) to understand, in Mind Brains, and Programs. His mainargument is that because AIs are computers and computers have no thoughts oftheir own, they cannot understand. Any actions being performed to simulate carriage are confined by the programs available to the computer. He presentsthe example of a firearm linking C hinese characters and appearing to know thelanguage, but in reality the troops is just following the instructions given to him( the program). This example serves well to apologize how although a computer canlook like it understands a story, it can do no more than "go through themotions."Of course such a definitive standpoint on an issue as moot asthe capacity of an AI to understand will draw more critics. The criticism ofhis theory that I find to be the most thinkable is The Other Mind Reply offeredby Yale University. This line of thinking asks if behavior is what we candetermine the presence of cognition through, and an AI passes a behavioural test,why dont we attribute cognition to it?     I myself do not desire in the philosophy of AI understanding, becauseto support either side on this issue one must have a belief for or against the