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Article 5703 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Antun Zirdum)
Subject: Re: Mean thoughts on what meaning means
Message-ID: <1992May17.071803.28448@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
References: <1992May14.164117.25016@psych.toronto.edu> <1992May14.221449.3721@spss.com> <1992May15.152549.13330@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Sun, 17 May 1992 07:18:03 GMT
Lines: 53

In article <1992May15.152549.13330@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>
>
>>>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.
>
>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?
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.

>
>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.
>
>


-- 
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*   AZ    -- zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca                            *
*     " The first hundred years are the hardest! " - W. Mizner  *
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