Xref: utzoo talk.philosophy.misc:3695 comp.ai:6142 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!apple!amdahl!kp From: kp@uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting) Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai Subject: Re: Why the Chinese Room doesn't convince Summary: On the expressibility of information Message-ID: Date: 3 Mar 90 02:03:05 GMT References: <12015@venera.isi.edu> Reply-To: kp@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting) Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA Lines: 44 In article <12015@venera.isi.edu> smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar) writes: >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; Well, how about ... a trivial form of the same proposition? Before I get into "information", please recall that I used this assertion in a discussion of the question "Does the fact that the semantics of a language can be defined in a formal notation show that semantics is indistinguishable from syntax?" In that context, I was concerned only to show that formal expressibility does not imply reducibility to syntax. I think Stephen has taken my remark out of its context, thereby inflating its significance. So I will attempt to re-trivialize the remark. Once some object or event is identified as information, its expressibility is already decided. This is because, on the going formal theories of information, the "signal", "message", or whatever is presented to its receiver in a code of some sort. Probability theory itself depends on the identification of events, and the otherwise abstemious Shannon theory inherits a hefty dependence on prior categorization therefrom. Assign a character to each event category, and off you go. This is *all* I meant by the remark above. Reading the parargraph about the Kronos Quartet brings up a completely different kettle of fish. Rather than delay any longer, I'll post this short clarification. I still have not decided how far to go into the issue of what goes on when a person reads a paragraph about a subjective experience. I have a lot I'd like to say about it, but most of my ideas are psychological rather than AI-oriented. I haven't been able to figure out how to express them in a vocabulary appropriate to this group. (who said "aha, inexpressible in symbolic form!" :-)