Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!mcnc!rti!ntpdvp1!kenp
From: kenp@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Ken Presting)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Hayes vs. Searle
Summary: Semantics won't go away
Message-ID: <615@ntpdvp1.UUCP>
Date: 31 Jul 90 21:15:20 GMT
References: <25618@cs.yale.edu> <25621@cs.yale.edu> <1608@oravax.UUCP> <25645@cs.yale.edu>
Organization: SNA Solutions Inc., Contract Programming Group
Lines: 35

In article <25645@cs.yale.edu>, blenko-tom@cs.yale.edu (Tom Blenko) writes:
> 
> If you think this issue (syntactic vs. semantic) is of less than
> earthshaking importance, I think Searle agrees with you. In fact, he
> expresses surprise in the Scientific American article that it has
> generated such confusion.  I think it could be answered by saying,
> "Well, we understood certain assumptions about the realization of the
> algorithm to be implicit," or, "Yes, this is may become an issue at
> some point, but for the purposes of our current research it is
> sufficient to assume some simplified connection, and that has been
> implicit in our discussion." I think this was just his opening skirmish
> -- Searle's main issue concerns intentional properties of intelligence
> and the problem of capturing these as part of some artifact.

Tom, I agree that there are two distinct issues in Searle's argument; one
concerned with semantic content, and the other concerned with "causal
powers".

But I see the semantic issue as primary for Searle, at least in terms of
his certainty that he's right, and the staying power of the problem.
Syntax really *doesn't* determine semantics.  So what can a program specify
besides the syntax of its I/O language?

Here's where I see the "implicit assumptions about the realization" coming
in.  It's implicit that the realization will have some "causal powers",
as David Chalmers pointed out.  I would add that it must have the specific
"causal power" to generate human-readable symbol-tokens, which undercuts
Putnam's "theorem" and Searle's claim that programs are "purely formal".

So now we have a real live implemented system, but all it does is shuffle
symbols!  We're still stuck in the Chinese room, until we know what it
means to "attach semantics to the symbols".   This is the big question.


Ken Presting   ("Krazy glue?")