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Article 2798 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Searle and the Chinese Room
Message-ID: <1992Jan16.211515.3234@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <DIRISH.92Jan14103326@jeeves.math.utah.edu> <1992Jan14.202806.29986@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <DIRISH.92Jan16121959@jeeves.math.utah.edu>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 92 21:15:15 GMT
Lines: 38

In article <DIRISH.92Jan16121959@jeeves.math.utah.edu> dirish@math.utah.edu (Dudley Irish) writes:

>The marks on the paper are not the recipe.  They are a representation
>of the recipe.

>See above.  The recipe is meaningless (has no semantic content) if it
>is not interpreted.  It is improper (a category mistake) to speak of
>the recipe as being un-interpreted.

If I'm cooking a casserole from a page I've torn out of Julia Childs'
cookbook, and then drop the page on the floor and tread on it, I can
say "I trod on the recipe" without committing any category mistake at
all (I don't say "Oh dear!  I trod on a representation of the recipe").
At best, the term "recipe" is ambiguous between the object doing
the representing and the represented object.  As I've made clear,
I'm talking about the object doing the representing.

>We like to think of our programming languages as formal languages, but
>I agree, we are mistaken when we do.

Fine.  Then we are agreed on the central claim, which is that there
isn't a relevant difference between programs and recipes in this respect.
The rest is terminological.

>If we formalized the recipes into a formal language then they would
>not be written in a natural language, they would be written in a
>formal language.  Again, I ask, could we please keep strait the
>difference between a formal language and a natural language.

Fine, but nothing in my argument depends on the recipes being written
in a natural language.  If they're written in a formal language, the
argument goes through equally well.  Hence the difference between
natural and formal languages is irrelevant here.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


