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Article 5882 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough)
Subject: Re: Comments on Searle - What could causal powers be?
Message-ID: <1992May23.182607.10121@oracorp.com>
Organization: ORA Corporation
Date: Sat, 23 May 1992 18:26:07 GMT
Lines: 59

daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough):
>>A specification of a real-world system should really involve a
>>program, together with a specification of the interface, which is the
>>real-world interpretation of the inputs and outputs.The program
>>itself is a purely mathematical object, but the interface
>>specification grounds the system in the real world. With this notion
>>of a specification of a system, different implementations of the same
>>specification share causal properties, in addition to abstract
>>structure. Two implementations are affected by the world in the same
>>way (or in analogous ways), and in turn affect the world in the same
>>way.

michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar):

>I take it then that you agree with Harnad that, without such real-world
>connections, there can be no semantics. Thus, Searle is at least right
>in saying that symbol manipulation in and of itself is insufficient for
>semantics.

My slogan is "Beware of slogans!" 8^), so I am not going to subscribe
to something like "Syntax is not sufficient for semantics", or
"Without real-world connections, there can be no semantics". To me,
the meaning of a system is determined by the world with which the
system interacts, and how it interacts with that world. Therefore, I
disagree with some AI types who would say that there is such a thing
as a conscious *algorithm*, and to this extent I agree with Searle.

However, in the case of the Chinese Room, the system interacts with
the rest of the world in the same way, regardless of whether there is
a speaker of Chinese, or a man following an algorithm, or a computer
program inside the room.

>This position still seems to leave SHRDLU's Dilemma, the problem of a
>program whose "world" is "a purely mathematical object". Could SHRDLU
>ever have semantics? As I interpret your claim above, it could not,
>simply because it has no interface with the "real" world.

The only reason I am prejudiced towards the "real" world is because it
is *my* world. I don't have any problem in general in believing that
the relationship between SHRDLU and his mathematical world could have
semantics. Semantics is about *relationships*, so I don't think a
system by itself can be said to possess semantics.

>> I don't think that an electronic computer and the Bolivian can both be
>> implementations of the same specification, because they don't provide
>> the same interface. However, if there is a translation device that allows
>> me to communicate with the Bolivian economy in terms of alpha-numeric
>> characters, then I will admit the possibility that the combined system
>> might be a perfectly good implementation.
> 
> And thus might be conscious?

As far as I know, yes.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY




