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Article 7048 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: throopw@sheol.UUCP (Wayne Throop)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Grounding
Summary: computers seem perfectly well grounded (or groundable) to me
Message-ID: <717645108@sheol.UUCP>
Date: 28 Sep 92 04:50:37 GMT
References: <1992Sep25.160149.26882@spss.com>
Lines: 32

: From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
: Message-ID: <1992Sep25.160149.26882@spss.com>
:>What do you mean by experiencing it yourself?  We humans are detached
:>from the physical world.  All we can "know" or "experience" is via
:>neural impulses [...]
: Why do you identify "we" with the brain, not with the entire organism?
: You are *not* detached from the physical world!  

Actually, I take a somewhat different tack.  Rather than saying that
"we" are detached (and hence implying an identification with the brain
alone), I'd say "we" are embedded in the real world...  and so are
computers. 

As near as I can tell, "symbols" are purely in the mind of the beholder,
and so to say that "humans don't interact with the rest of the world via
symbols" and "computers do interact with rest of the world via symbols"
are essentially meaningless.  There is no objective fact of the matter
for either of these claims. 

Similarly, the claim that computers "don't transduce" real-world stimuli
and humans do seems very ill thought out.  Both transduce real-world
stimuli.  There is no extremely strong difference I can see between a
photoreceptor in the human eye firing or a key contact in a keyboard
closing, or between a pixel turning on and a muscle fiber contracting. 

So, I really can't buy into this "computers aren't grounded" claim.  It
seems very ill thought out to me.  It seems to me that computers are
perfectly well grounded, but they simply don't exhibit intelligent
behavior.  Current computers may even lack the capacity for it (by
virtue of being too slow and/or too "small"). 
--
Wayne Throop  ...!mcnc!dg-rtp!sheol!throopw


