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From: dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument
Message-ID: <17015@cup.portal.com>
Date: 11 Apr 89 07:36:55 GMT
References: <16873@cup.portal.com> <3701@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
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In article <3701@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu
(Greg Lee) writes:

>So a label which is the target of a branch instruction does not represent
>anything, eh.  Not even a location in the program?  Are you under the
>impression that you are making sense here?  Let me disabuse you.

     The operative question is, just whose label is it?  Is it your label,
or is it the computer's label.  To you, a horse in a painting may be a
symbol of virility.  To the painter, it may have been merely an animal he
happens to like (perhaps he owns a horse), and represents nothing.  To the
painter, it may not have been a symbol at all.

     The world is full of people making symbols (for themselves) out of
things that are not, and of assigning meanings to symbols that never
entered the symbol creator's mind.

     Symbolism is, to a large extent, private and subjective.


>Look, I know what's coming next.  Just as earlier we were treated to a
>distinction between understanding of the ordinary sort which a computer
>can display and "true" understanding with an essential subjective element,
>now you're going to say the things in an assembly language program aren't
>"true" symbols.  There's some special human magic I invest in symbols when
>I write a program that compilers can never know. So you can spare us the
>usual mumbo-jumbo.

     No special magic, no mumbo-jumbo.  Just an observation that what to
you is a symbol of some thought-entity (a branch location) is to the
computer merely another arrangement of voltages to be manipulated.

     To _you_, it's a symbol.  To the computer, it's the object of
discourse, and not a symbol at all.  The use/mention distinction, again.


Dan Hankins

     At one place was a Master who answered all questions by holding up one
finger.  One of his students, seeing this, began to emulate him.  The Master
had the student brought before him, and asked him the nature of the Buddha.
When the student held up one finger the Master drew his sword and cut it off.
The student screamed in pain and cried out, "Why did you do that?".  The
Master smiled and held up one finger.  Then the student was enlightened.
      _
-Zen koan