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Article 1609 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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Subject: Re: Zeleny (was Re: Searle
Message-ID: <1991Nov25.183929.2155@arizona.edu>
>From: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Date: 25 Nov 91 18:39:28 MST
Reply-To: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
References: <1991Nov14.223348.4076@milton.u.washington.edu> 
 <MATT.91Nov24000158@physics.berkeley.edu> 
 <1991Nov24.195230.5843@husc3.harvard.edu> <1991Nov24.224724.2149@arizona.edu> <5691@skye.ed.ac.uk>
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Sorry, my previous attempt to post backfired for reasons I don't
understand, and ended up posting only a quoted version of the
article I was responding to.
Anyway, here we go again:

In article <1991Nov25.103050.5868@husc3.harvard.edu> 
zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>In article <1991Nov24.224724.2149@arizona.edu> 
>bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs) writes:

MZ:
>>Pray tell, what part of the computer hardware or software could
>>make it stand for something outside the machine, as signs used by humans
>>stand for things in virtue of their meanings?

BS:
>  The answer is quite simple.  Any computer interacting with the
>world outside the machine is going to need symbols for things
>outside the machine.  For example, a computer manipulating a
>robot arm will have symbols for the parts of the arm and their
>positions.  A computer playing chess will have symbols for the
>pieces and their locations.

MZ:
>An arm is a part of the machine; it's not too hard to internalize the
>relevant part of the semantical relation, since the object denoted by the
>terms of the internal code is physically connected to the machine, and
>controlled by it.  Try programming a chess-playing computer to recognize
>and identify a piece belonging to an arbitrary chess set, as humans can.

Oh come on, let's not waste time on trivia.  The machine also needs
symbols for the widgets the arm moves around, and they are not part of it.
The rest of the response is an evasion.  

Incidentally, the most interesting work on visual recognition (actually
recognition of letter-forms from arbitrary alphabets) has been done
by Douglas Hofstadter, in the context of AI.  (Some of it is in
*Metamagical Themas*.)

BS:
>  Arguments such as Searle's and Penrose's and Zeleny's are 
>essentially theological.  They all assume that humans have
>one or another mystic power.  Penrose assumes that humans have
>infallible intuitions for mathematical "truth".  Searle
>assumes that human brains have unspecified "causal powers".
>Zeleny assumes that humans are capable of infinite recursion
>(which seems to be part of "denoting", as he defines it).

MZ:
>Penrose argues that humans have mathematical intuitions; Searle argues for
>causal powers of human brains.  I argue that any system capable of denoting
>must in some way be capable of infinite recursion.  Can you tell the
>difference between an assumption and an argument?

Zeleny does not argue, that's the problem.  He just gives names.
I am not interested in refuting eighteen misguided philosophers
who didn't even agree with each other.  The claim that humans
are capable of infinite recursion is highly, um, counterintuitive.
Let's hear some evidence to back it up.

(In my book, when an argument is based on an appeal to faith, 
it is no different from an assumption.)

BS:
>  I see no reason to think that humans are capable of any of
>these things.  Zeleny says there is empirical evidence that
>humans can "denote".  I wish he would give some of it.  Let
>us please have one single concrete example, rather than this
>haze of philosophical jargon.

MZ:
>What did you call me?

After an Email exchange, I have been informed that this rather
cryptic response was intended to mean that my use of the name
"Zeleny" is the concrete example I am looking for.  Okay, I'll
bite.  What is the empirical evidence that my use of the name
"Zeleny" involves an infinite recursion?

	-- Bill





