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Article 2016 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: fb0m+@andrew.cmu.edu (Franklin Boyle)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle, again
Message-ID: <cdFE0d_00UhBQ1va9x@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: 10 Dec 91 17:58:01 GMT
Organization: Cntr for Design of Educational Computing, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 27

Mark Rosenfelder writes:

>> In article <wdEw6pa00iUzE2j7Qr@andrew.cmu.edu> fb0m+@andrew.cmu.edu
(Franklin >> Boyle) writes (quoting me):
>>> The fact that the Room's ability to deal with the external world is 
>>> ultimately a bunch of computer instructions is no more significant than
>>> the fact that our ability to do the same thing is ultimately a bunch of
>>> neurochemistry.
>>
>>I think you're comparing two different levels here.  Computer instructions
>>are at the level of patterns or extended structures which are informational. 
> 
>Huh?  Do you think that applies to a shift-left instruction?  To a POP?
>"Computer instructions" could refer to anything from machine code to
>high-level function calls.  There is no level which can be _exclusively_
>identified with "patterns" or "information."

As long as they are combinations of "high" and "low" voltages or 1's
and 0's they are extended physical structures.  Their functional level makes 
no difference.  As extended structures, they are above the level of electrical 
interactions, just as the structure of the retinotopically mapped visual 
stimulus on the visual cortex is above the level of neurochemistry.
My claim is that these two levels are the informationally relevant levels
in the two systems (forget about all the levels Newell gives in his
Physical Symbol Systems paper).

-Frank


