Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsd!nosc!humu!uhccux!lee
From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Where might CR understanding come from (if it exists)
Message-ID: <3637@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 2 Apr 89 14:58:14 GMT
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 22


It's hard to see where CR understanding might come from (if it exists).
It's hard to see where understanding might come from (if it exists).
It's hard to see where consciousness might come from (if it exists).
It's hard to see where meaning might come from (if it exists).

I know why it's hard.  These things don't exist.  There are theories to
the contrary that are embedded in the way we ordinarily talk about
people and their behavior.  Meaning is the most obvious case.  When two
sentences are paraphrases, we say they 'mean the same thing'.  Then
there must be a thing that they both mean, right?  Thinking of that as a
theory, it might be right, or it might be wrong.  We ought to devise
alternative theories and look for evidence.  We have.  I think it's
wrong, myself, but opinions differ.  If it does turn out to be wrong,
then the effort to program meaning into a machine can never be
successful -- not because meaning is essentially human, or essentially
organic, or essentially analogue, or essentially denotational, or any of
the other straws that have been grasped at in this discussion.  But
because there's simply no such thing in the world to be found in us or
to be put into a machine.

		Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu