From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!wupost!uunet!psinntp!scylla!daryl Tue Mar 24 09:55:46 EST 1992
Article 4460 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Mar14.222241.21065@oracorp.com>
Organization: ORA Corporation
Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1992 22:22:41 GMT

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

> I take it as a *fact* about us (or at least me) that we *are* able
> to connect symbols to the world in such a way as yields meaning (or
> semantics, or understanding, or whatever).

I agree that it is a fact. All I was saying is that Searle's argument
that computers can never understand can just as well apply to people
as computers. Therefore, either (a) there is something magical that
exempts people from the argument, (b) the argument is wrong, or (c)
neither people nor computers can understand. Searle believes (a), I
believe (b), and you are trying to stick me with (c).

Of course people are capable of understanding, but as I said, I
believe that this fact is due to the functional properties of the
brain and the way the brain is connected to the world through our
sense organs. What I don't believe is that there is some magical way
that our thoughts have "semantics" that is not available to computers.

> Sure, you can deny that humans actually have something called
> "understanding" or "subjective experience" and thus counter Searle,
> but to do so it to avoid the question, not to answer it.  If you
> *don't* think you have something called "understanding," fine.  But
> then we can't talk...

I am not denying either understanding or subjective experience. What I
am denying is that either of these requires something beyond what is
available to a digital computer.

>>In my opinion, the most that can be asked of an intelligent being
>>(computer or human) is:
>>
>>1. It's internal processing produces the right relationships among its
>>internal patterns.
>>
>>2. The being's [connections] to the world produces the right relationship
>>between the internal patterns and the external world.

> If this is all you want, then Searle shouldn't bother you, because
> all you want is essentially a behaviouristic account of intelligence.
> The Chinese Room is an attempt to show that such an account is
> insufficient, in that it does not necessarily yield our subjective
> experience of intelligence. If you don't include this subjective
> component, then everything is hunky-dory. But many people believe
> subjective experience to be the hallmark of the mental.

I am not denying the reality of subjective experience, but I believe
that 1. and 2.  above are sufficient for both behavior and subjective
experience. I agree that the Chinese Room is an attempt to show that
such an account is insufficient, but I think it is a *failed* attempt.

>>To the extent that this isn't sufficient for true semantics, mortal
>>beings don't *have* true semantics.

> Well, we certainly have *something*, which might as well be called
> "true semantics," since the term was developed to describe features of
> our world.

Maybe I should have said "*If* this isn't sufficient for true
semantics, mortal beings don't have true semantics." It's not that I
don't believe that our words have meaning, it is that I don't believe
that our words have any more meaning than words used by a running
computer program with the right functionality and interface.

> In the end what is needed is a satisfactory account of semantics or
> meaning. Once we have this, we can then see if purely syntatic
> devices are the kinds of things which can have these things.
> Currently, however, all we have are some preliminary attempts at
> accounting for meaning, and a principled distinction between syntax
> and semantics.

I don't think that we are lacking for an account of the distinction
between syntax and semantics. The syntax of a language is its
intrinsic structural properties (the rules saying what constitutes a
term, how terms are combined to make sentences, etc.) The semantics is
the interpretation, which is the mapping from terms and sentences in
the language to objects and relationships in the intended domain. We
can classify sentences as syntactically correct or and semantically
correct regardless of whether it was uttered by a person, a computer,
or a parrot.

The controversy is not really over syntax versus semantics, it is over
the question of whether the semantics is somehow "inherent" in the
system producing the language.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY


