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From: kp@uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Why the Chinese Room doesn't convince
Keywords: Searle, Chinese Room, semantics, Putnam, Lakoff, model theory
Message-ID: <34r402wR94ml01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com>
Date: 21 Mar 90 01:34:40 GMT
References: <2080@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: kp@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 23

In article <2080@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>If you start with meaningless, uninterpreted symbols it's hard to see
>how they end up referring to what we think we do.  For example, there's
>Hilary Putnam's argument about the "Skolemization of everything" ...
> . . .  I think it's right to question whether connecting up some
>cameras, robot arms, etc would do it, because (as Searle points out)
>they just produce more meaningless symbols from the computer's point
>of view (so to speak).

This is very important.  I think Putnam, Lakoff, and Quine and Whorf
before them, are basically correct to conclude that reference is
indeterminate.  Many unsettling implications follow from these skeptical
arguments.

One relevant implication is about the Symbol Grounding Problem.  Any
attempt to find "intrinsic meaning" in the symbols which a computer
crunches will never find intrinsic *reference*.  Maybe that's OK, since
human symbols don't have intrinsic reference either.  But if Searle
wants intrinsic meanings, he may have to provide an account of meaning
which can do without reference.  If this is possible at all, it's not
going to be easy.

Ken Presting