From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael Mon May 25 14:06:02 EDT 1992
Article 5721 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar)
Subject: Re: Mean thoughts on what meaning means
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <1992May14.221449.3721@spss.com> <1992May15.152549.13330@psych.toronto.edu> <1992May17.071803.28448@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Message-ID: <1992May18.184800.13049@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Mon, 18 May 1992 18:48:00 GMT

In article <1992May17.071803.28448@ccu.umanitoba.ca> zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Antun Zirdum) writes:
>In article <1992May15.152549.13330@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:

>>If all you've got in the encyclopedia are more symbols, then your still
>>stuck.  Imagine trying to learn how to read Chinese from a Chinese-Chinese
>>dictionary.  You want to know what "squiggle-squoggle" means.  So
>>you look it up, and its definition reads: "Squoggle squiggle-squiggle
>>squaggle squoggle."  Do you now know what "squiggle-squoggle" means? 
>>Of course not.  Is there any way to bootstrap yourself *solely* using
>>the Chinese-Chinese dictionary?  No.     
>>
>	Again, you speak on matters which you have no
>knowledge of. How did Helen Kehler get bootstrapped?

Well, she had contact with the outside world, *and* she was a human
being.  

>It seems to me that a dictionary lookup intelligence
>will not be able to refer to much except words, but
>that does not mean that it cannot refer to ANYTHING.

The "reference" you've got here is terribly impoverished, if all it can 
do is refer to things that refer...

>>To take an alternate view on the issue, if one demands grounding of
>>symbols through transducers, then one is denying that implementations
>>such as SHRDLU, which has built into it its own artificial reality, can
>>actually contain meaning, since the *entire universe* for that entity
>>is run in a purely symbolic environment.  For poor SHRDLU, none of its
>>symbols are "grounded" in the real world, and therefore all it can do
>>is the equivalent of reading a Chinese-Chinese dictionary, with no
>>notion of what the symbols *really* mean.  Under the demand for
>>transducer grounding, SHRDLU can have no semantics.
>>
>SHRDLU is actually two systems, one is the reality, the
>other is the intelligence. The SHRDLU intelligence
>is connected to the outside world by the computer
>controls of its operators, thru the simulated reality.

But it's *not* connected to the outside world - *all* of its world is
*inside* the computer.  In addition, I'm not so sure that it is easy
to make a principled distinction in this case of what is the intelligence,
and what is the entity.  What criteria are you using?

- michael



