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Article 4466 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Systems Reply I
Message-ID: <1992Mar14.010014.552@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
>From: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Date: 14 Mar 92 01:00:14 GMT
Reply-To: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
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References: <1992Mar6.185926.18497@oracorp.com> <1992Mar9.171606.6886@psych.toronto.edu> 
 <6374@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1992Mar11.201637.21875@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Center for Neural Systems, Memory, and Aging
Lines: 42

In article <6374@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

>BTW, I still haven't seen a satisfactory answer to the point that
>the Room manipulates meaningless symbols (ie, treats them syntactically)
>without any way to attach meaning to them.  But maybe I've just
>missed it in all the noise.

  I will argue that the symbols the Room manipulates are not
meaningless.  Here goes:

  To say that a symbol has meaning is to say that it represents.
How does a symbol come to represent?  The Functionalist answer,
which I subscribe to, is that a symbol represents if it has
the *function* of representing.

  What, then, is a "function", and how does something come to
have one?

  Answer: "function" is a teleological notion.  The function of
a component is the role it plays in achieving the *goal* of the
system it is part of.

  What, then, is a "goal", and how does something come to have
one?

  Answer:  Any system (such as the human genome) that has evolved
by natural selection can be assigned the primitive goal of 
surviving.  Other goals and functions are inherited from this
primitive goal.  Machines inherit goals from the fact that they
are designed for specific purposes by beings that have evolved
by natural selection, and the components of machines perform
functions in helping them achieve their goals.  

  Now to answer the original question:  The Chinese Room is created
by humans for the purpose of passing the Turing test, so its symbols 
have the *function* of representing what they are designed to
represent.  That is, they have meaning.

  If something like the Chinese Room could arise by accident,
then there would be a problem, but that is impossible.

	-- Bill


