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Article 5663 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Mean thoughts on what meaning means
Message-ID: <1992May14.221449.3721@spss.com>
Date: 14 May 92 22:14:49 GMT
References: <1992May11.163332.27781@psych.toronto.edu> <1992May13.001033.14320@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <1992May14.164117.25016@psych.toronto.edu>
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In article <1992May14.164117.25016@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu 
(Michael Gemar) writes:
>I can know what properties my mind has, without knowing how these
>properties are produced.  If I can also demonstrate that some
>thing cannot produce those properties, then I've got my argument.
>I have semantics. 

OK so far--

>The symbols that I use to communciate in the world
>have inherent meaning - I know, since *I* am the one using them.

Whoa!  How do you know they have *inherent* meaning?  Introspection cannot
tell you.  You are within the system which uses these symbols-- you *are*
that system, in fact-- so introspection only shows they have meaning within
this system, not inherent meaning.  

Symbols in an AI algorithm could have meaning in this sense, too.  To
the algorithm, symbol XYZ represents hamburgers: it is linked to encyclopedic
information about hamburgers, it is activated and used when the attached
camera is pointed at a hamburger, it is linked up to other experiences
where the system has interacted with hamburgers, it appears in the internal
representations of sentences that contain the word "hamburger".

A skeptical outside observer could claim that XYZ doesn't inherently mean
a hamburger.  But he could claim that the word "hamburger" doesn't inherently
mean a hamburger, either.

>However, symbols in and of themselves *have* no inherent meaning - 
>they are just "marks".  If you shuffle these marks around based
>*solely* on their formal properties, then these marks *still*
>do not acquire *inherent* meaning (*I* be able to interpret them,
>but that is a different matter).  

You seem to be thinking about (say) propositional logic, where you never
look at what the symbols point to.  But we don't have to build things that
way.  We can shuffle around symbols based on what they *point to*--
e.g. encyclopedic information about their referents, which surely cannot
be described as "formal properties" of the symbol itself.


