From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu!chandra Tue May 12 15:49:04 EDT 1992
Article 5413 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu!chandra
>From: chandra@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran)
Subject: Re: Comments on Searle
In-Reply-To: maione@cs.toronto.edu's message of 5 May 92 03: 19:10 GMT
Message-ID: <CHANDRA.92May5083503@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Originator: chandra@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu
Sender: news@cis.ohio-state.edu (NETnews        )
Organization: Ohio State Computer Science
References: <92May4.231849edt.47880@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 5 May 1992 13:35:03 GMT
Lines: 26


In article <92May4.231849edt.47880@neat.cs.toronto.edu> maione@cs.toronto.edu (Ian Christopher Maione) writes:
   It does seem as there is a clear difference
   between someone who is a native Chinese speaker and someone who is
   manipulating symbols to produce Chinese sentences.  Does anyone have a
   good idea on how to precisely characterize this difference?

As words are heard and they are grouped into phrases and sentences and
discourse units, the native chinese speaker's sense of understanding
is grounded in the various perceptual and motor modalities by "images"
of various kinds which at bottom is the root of the "meaning."
Additionally, the rule book itself has as part of the LHS of the
rules, these images.  Thus having these images has a causal effect on
the further meaning-extracting behavior of the native chinese speaker.
The symbol-pusher does not have any of this phenomenological
experience, in fact he is unlikely to complete the information
processing required if my hypothesis that the rules have fragments of
the images in them.  Thus even when the symbol-pusher thinks he has
concstruted a meaning, the stages of arriving at that meaning were
entirely unmediated by the images, and thus he does not feel himself
as one who understands Chinese.

 





