“I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed computer understands what the car and the adding machine understand, namely, exactly nothing.”
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We often attribute 'understanding' and other cognitive predicates by metaphor and analogy to cars, adding machines, and other artifacts, but nothing is proved by such attributions.
My car and my adding machine understand nothing: they are not in that line of business.
Unfortunately we don't have all the bits and pieces on the car that we had hoped to have by this stage so we've got to make as good a job as we can with what we have and we feel we are doing well with that at the moment.
I remember being at Greenblatt's on Sunset, and some guy just walked straight up to me, and he had some bling on and whatever, and said something about a party down in Malibu and asked if I would jump in his car and go to the party. All I could think was, 'Who are you? I don't know you, and I don't care about how good your car is.'