From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!wupost!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Mon Dec 16 11:01:37 EST 1991
Article 2092 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle and the Chinese Room
Message-ID: <317@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 12 Dec 91 19:55:24 GMT
References: <1991Dec5.210724.12480@cs.yale.edu> <1991Dec8.192843.6951@psych.toronto.edu> <1991Dec11.170157.27053@cs.yale.edu> <1991Dec11.203452.9419@psych.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 61

In article <1991Dec11.203452.9419@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
|
|In article <1991Dec11.170157.27053@cs.yale.edu> mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott) writes:
|>The bottom line is that semantics is epiphenomenal, although useful in
|>explaining why certain syntactic systems maneuver through a world of
|>zebras so well.  It does not matter that syntax =/= semantics, because
|>semantics plays no role in our use of internal symbol systems.
|
|*SEMANTICS IS EPIPHENOMINAL????!!!!!!!*
|
|I find it nearly impossible to believe that *you* believe this.  Is 
|understanding merely "epiphenominal"?

Certainly.  *Everything* about our minds is epiphenominal, even syntax.

Nothing in our cognitive processing is, at the physical level, anything
except a changing pattern of activation in the neurons of our cerebral cortex.

Thus, since, at the physical level, this is all that is happening, *everything*
else is an epiphenomenon derived therefrom.
|
|Even if you *do* believe that semantics plays *no causal role* in
|cognition (a position which, I must admit, goes against *my* intuitions)
|then you *still* need to account for why we *believe* we have semantics and
|understanding.  I believe that there is no way to do this *without*
|granting semantics causal efficacy, and hence undermining your assertion.

Hardly.  When I say I understand a word that usually simply means I do
not have to *consciously* think about its significance.

Thus I suspect that 'understand' essentially means 'the association network
that correlates this symbol to the outside world, and to my behavior, is
entirely subconscious'.

I can certainly find no 'structure' to my own intuition of understanding,
so I suspect it is mainly just a convenient fiction for certain aspects of
pre-attentive processing. [That is it is a label for the fact that the
associated information is available *immmedately*].

|>At the risk of repeating myself (and McCarthy), it matters not whether
|>*I* know, so long as the virtual person instantiated by the program knows.
|
|But how do *they* know?  And what the heck do you *mean* by "virtual person"?

The same way *I* know, by associations between inputs and outputs.

A virtual person is the set of behaviors, memories and attitudes that
are instantiated by the operation of an algorithm in my brain, but which
do not alter my own memories or attitudes.

This even happens in real life, without programming.  We call it Multiple
Personality Disorder.

|And why can't *I*, by performing the appropriate operations, instantiate
|one myself?

You could, if you could learn a sufficient set of operations.  But you do
not have an adequate set descriptions to instantiate such a set.
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)


