Xref: utzoo talk.philosophy.misc:3642 comp.ai:6072 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!venera.isi.edu!smoliar From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai Subject: Re: Why the Chinese Room doesn't convince Summary: on the power of symbols Message-ID: <12015@venera.isi.edu> Date: 24 Feb 90 16:35:25 GMT Sender: news@venera.isi.edu Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar) Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute Lines: 89 In article <0cWk02pp8aza01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> kp@uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting) writes: > >All information can be expressed and processed in symbolic form, whether >it's about the syntax of a language, the semantics of a language, >the positions of the planets, even whether John loves Mary. As long as this discussion is being cross-posted to talk.philosophy.misc, perhaps we should try to take a look at this sentence without being drawn into the kind of hysteria which Searle has promulgated. Do any of us REALLY believe that ALL information can be both expressed and processed in symbolic form? I, for one, am not willing to buy into the extreme form of this proposition; and I would like to try to elaborate on the point WITHOUT falling into the trap of playing games with highly-charged terms like "understanding." My reasons for questioning this assertion actually have more to do with Marvin Minsky's THE SOCIETY OF MIND than with anything Searle has yet said on the issue of intelligence. Much of Minsky's book is based on raising doubts as to whether patterns of behavior which are associated with memory can be adequately modeled in terms of the sentential forms of a symbolic logic, the sort of symbolic form which is usually invoked for the representation of information in Ken's premise. Minsky's doubts actually have their roots in a Freudian view of the world. He says that we usually assume that declarative facts are easy for a machine to store and recall, while concepts such as feelings are much more difficult, while in the human brain, the situation is very much the other way around. Fundamental to much of Minsky's writing is the question of what it is about the human brain that makes this "reversal of priorities" so. The point is that, while you should have no trouble with a symbolic representation of the sentence "John loves Mary," that does not mean that you have any representation of how John actually FEELS. I realize that this brings me dangerously close to some of Searle's arguments about intentionality, but I don't think we have to go over that brink. Instead, let me try to give a more concrete example which does not involve a fictitious John and Mary. Let me only assume that we have both seen the movie PSYCHO. (If this is not the case, let me know; and I shall come up with another example.) In 1988 the Kronos Quartet happened to give a recital on Halloween here in Los Angeles. They have built up quite a reputation for playing arrangements of rock, jazz, and blues for encore pieces. On this occasion, however, they ended the evening with an arrangement of the shower music from PSYCHO. This had all sorts of effects on me. On the one hand, it reminded me of that portion of the film and all the elements of anxiety associated with it. On the other, there was an amusing side to hearing this being played by a string quartet in a concert hall (enhanced by the viola player coming out in a towel and shower cap). As a result, I was dealing with concurrent impressions of anxiety and amusement. It was really quite something. Now, think about what I have communicated to you in that last paragraph. Assuming you know about PSYCHO and assuming you know something about string quartets, my guess is that I have been able to communicate my impressions to you; but HAVE I DONE SO IN TERMS OF INFORMATION EXPRESSED IN SYMBOLIC FORM? On the one hand, you can argue--and rightly so--that the above paragraph is a symbolic form; but it that where the information resides? Another possibility is that I have tried to use the words of the above paragraph to INDUCE retrieval from your own store of memories in such a way that you might be able to share the feelings I had. If that is the case, then I MIGHT be willing to argue that the "information," such as it is, resides in your own mental state; and I am using those words simply to DISPOSE you to invoke that mental state. At this point, I do not think we are talking about information expressed in symbolic form any more. What ARE we talking about, then? Quite honestly, I'm not really sure. However, as a result of attending the Santa Fe Artificial Life Conference, I am willing to entertain the possibility of viewing information as an EMERGENT PROPERTY, by which I mean a "side effect" of some set of activities, rather than a concrete object that I can describe symbolically in terms of concepts, attributes, and relations. If this is the case (and I still feel it is necessary to emphasize that we are dealing with a VERY BIG "if"), then there may, after all, be justification in arguing about the shortcomings of what we can do with symbols. Ironically, Searle seems more inclined to beat up on Minsky in his expositions (as he did at a colloquium at UCLA) then consider the possibility that Minsky may be introducing a new twist which might be of value to him. ========================================================================= USPS: Stephen Smoliar USC Information Sciences Institute 4676 Admiralty Way Suite 1001 Marina del Rey, California 90292-6695 Internet: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu "Only a schoolteacher innocent of how literature is made could have written such a line."--Gore Vidal