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Article 5778 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: ske@pkmab.se (Kristoffer Eriksson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Comments on Searle - What could causal powers be?
Message-ID: <6885@pkmab.se>
Date: 19 May 92 07:20:35 GMT
References: <1992May11.163332.27781@psych.toronto.edu> <1992May13.001033.14320@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <1992May14.164117.25016@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Peridot Konsult i Mellansverige AB, Oerebro, Sweden
Lines: 37

In article <1992May14.164117.25016@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>In article <1992May13.001033.14320@ccu.umanitoba.ca> zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Antun Zirdum) writes:
>>In article <1992May11.163332.27781@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. ... The symbols that I use to communciate in
>the world have inherent meaning - I know, since *I* am the one using
>them. 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).  

Ah, *inherent* meaning!

You say that you yourself, but not necessarily anyone else, would still
be able to interprete symbols without inherent meaning (presumably
since it would be you that assigned them some arbitrary meaning). Are you
implying that the situation is otherwise for symbols *with* inherent
meaning, i.e. that anyone could understand those symbols? Would you
please show me one of them?

I would like to question the idea that there is any "inherent" meaning,
independant of observer, to anything at all, whether symbols in your human
mind or otherwise. I think the nearest you can get to inherent meaning is
symbols that have a fixed meaning in a fixed context, for instance, all
symbols that your mind uses internally (if it uses any symbols of any kind)
could have a fixed meaning with respect to your mind, making them appear
to you as if they had an inherent meaning, but those meanings would not
appear inherent to anyone else (if they can find any meaning to them at
all), except in the sense that we could make the context of your mind a
privileged context for all symbols appearing in it.

-- 
Kristoffer Eriksson, Peridot Konsult AB, Hagagatan 6, S-703 40 Oerebro, Sweden
Phone: +46 19-13 03 60  !  e-mail: ske@pkmab.se
Fax:   +46 19-11 51 03  !  or ...!{uunet,mcsun}!mail.swip.net!kullmar!pkmab!ske


