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From: markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: more Chinese Room (woulda been: Is The Chinese Room Argument Consistent?)
Message-ID: <1890@uwm.edu>
Date: 14 Jan 90 03:06:22 GMT
References: <2602@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu> <1527@skye.ed.ac.uk> <4921.25ad37f7@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk>
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Reply-To: markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
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In article <1527@skye.ed.ac.uk>, jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>                                                 How would I ever know
> that some Chinese symbol meant "tree", for example?

In article <4921.25ad37f7@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk> ian@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk writes:
>You could see how it fitted with other symbols, how certain symbols appeared
>together, how certain rules treated it.  You may not be able to say that you
>would know what a *particular* symbol meant or which symbol meant *tree*, but
>I am sure that you would eventually work out the meanings of *some* symbols.

This is where I can expand on my viewpoint a little more.  So I offer
this answer:

you'll know that *tree* means tree, because the rules for learning Chinese
would have TOLD you to go outside, hug a tree (which you would presumably
already know how to recognize) and say "tree" (in Chinese).

The rule linking symbol to actual neural-motor (and pattern recognition
routine) is a purely formal rule captured (perhaps) in a pushdown-transducer
formalism (or why not in a Finite State machine formalism -- just add stack
operations and other data structure operations in the augmentations).

It links the term "tree" to a routine which process purely formal symbols
that just happen to have been implemented in the architecture as actuator
or sensory signals (but that would have no bearing on the fact that the
intelligence is intelligent).

Ultimately, you'll link "tree" to other meanings, some of which may
already be one or more levels of indirection to actual signal processing
routines.  That is ... routines are first-class data structures in the
underlying architecture, and form the building blocks of symbols.

We can PROVE that the symbols we manipulate in our minds ARE meaningless
if we were able to "cross the wires" that link neural signals to
sensors and actuators -- so that willing yourself to move your arm would cause
you to start walking. :)  You'd breakdown in terrible confusion while you
tried to retrain yourself to adapt to the changed connections -- yet you'd
still be considered intelligent.

The lesson to be learned from that is that meaningfulness of symbols
has no bearing on intelligence.  Your brain doesn't care what the symbols
that correspond to signals do or where they come from -- i.e. it doesn't
care what the symbols ultimately mean.