Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!spool.mu.edu!uunet!ckgp!thomas
From: thomas@ckgp.UUCP (Michael Thomas)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Symbol Manipulation? (was: IF IT DOES NOT PASS TT ...)
Message-ID: <609@ckgp.UUCP>
Date: 24 Jun 91 19:42:12 GMT
Article-I.D.: ckgp.609
References: <9106200231.AA06339@lilac.berkeley.edu> <608@ckgp.UUCP> <1991Jun22.214056.15410@milton.u.washington.edu>
Organization: CKGP Assoc. Inc. Birmingham, MI
Lines: 49

In article <1991Jun22.214056.15410@milton.u.washington.edu>, forbis@milton.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis) writes:
> I have tried to decide what I was.  I don't experience the world but merely
> recieve signals I believe to be from that world and produce some signals
> I believe have an effect in the world.  I don't consider myself only a
> symbol manipulator yet I fail to see the real world except though the
> signals I recieve and interpret as representational of the world.  These
> signals represent my experiences.

  I am sorry, I didn't mean to use the word "experience". The point of
  saying that "...computer could never experience the world..." was
  that, as the computer sits now, it has no sensory receptors...So
  it can not receive any stimulus from the world around it. Yes it has
  a key board, but this is not a complete/good sensory device. The amount
  of stimulus you receive is hardly comparable to what the computer now 
  handles... My point before is that the computer would need some type
  of system in which it could learn directly from interacting in the
  world. ( I can read all I want about how to drive a car but until I
  actually drive a car I really don't understand how to drive a car;
  how many of you hold the stearing wheel in the 11:00 o'clock and
  2:00 o'clock positions???)

> Do computers manipulate symbols?  It seems to me that we may interpret what
> computers do as manipulating symbols but the computers are just doing what
> computers do with those signals they recieve.  Can I call this other than
> experiencing the world?  

  I feel that computer manipulate symbols (two 0 and 1) just as we manipulate
  symbols which are created from a combination of frequencies...and the
  same with the computer, the combination of 0's and 1's establish a
  symbol system from which it can use numbers and letters (and that's about
  it...) The only difference I see between a computer and the brain, other
  that how the symbols are established, is that the brain wasn't established
  to manipulate symbols, but rather frequencies which it does...it handles
  sound and sight and touch, etc... a computer just handles the symbols
  established from its two base symbols...(do you follow me...)

> Maybe computers' sensory apparatus and effectors are limited but is this 
> sufficient to say they do not exist?  If computers are not active agents in
> the world then why do humans refuse to let me buy things with my pieces of
> plastic sometime while gladly accepting them in payment at other times?

  I think I made my original point clear, but for this, yes the computer
  has an effect on your life, but you don't have an effect on its life,
  for which it is aware...

-- 
Thank you,
Michael Thomas
(..uunet!ckgp!thomas)