Xref: utzoo talk.philosophy.misc:3714 comp.ai:6155 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!dino!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!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 Activity of Reading Keywords: reading, information, symbols Message-ID: <9cjn029A8eaA01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> Date: 5 Mar 90 19:13:34 GMT References: <12015@venera.isi.edu> Reply-To: kp@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting) Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA Lines: 128 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. > > . . . 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; . . . I've decided to wimp out on actually stating a theoretical account of what goes on whan a person reads a passage of text, but I will try to give an example of one of the many things that can happen: >. . . >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.) . . . Stephen has gone to some trouble with these two lines, to identify an assumption and to indicate his willingness to accomodate the reader. These two lines are transitional between the polemical passage just before, and the evocative passage that follows. Making assumptions is a natural part of arguing, but it is uncommon for someone defending a position to be able to drop an assumption without losing some force from his argument. By emphasizing that he is making an assumption, then immediately offering to withrdaw it, Stephen effectively disarms the polemically inclined reader. > > ... ... > >. . . I was dealing with concurrent impressions of anxiety and amusement. >It was really quite something. When I first read this carefully, I thought "How anticlimactic the last sentence is - of course it was *quite something*". I thought that Stephen had diluted the impact of his description, by adding a sentence that conveyed no extra information. Of course, I was mistaken in that judgement, which I quickly realized. After envisioning such events as a musician appearing on stage in a towel and shower cap, the reader can well use an extra line to readjust to the dry polemical attitude. >Now, think about what I have communicated to you in that last paragraph. This is a crucial, absolutely essential line. Stephen cannot force his reader to think. He can manipulate the reader's mood, and he can sidetrack the reader's critical impulses. If worst comes to worst, he can explicitly *order* his reader to think about the content of the message. But if the reader wants to ignore the content and focus on the form, Stephen can't do a thing about it. >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; *Guess* my foot! Mr. Smoliar, you know *exactly* what you are doing with words. I doubt that any reader could avoid receiving your impression. But you are correct that you must guess. Although I have refused to discuss the content of the passage, would you say I have misread it, or misunderstood it? Reading is by no means a passive process, although the illusion of passivity is fundamental to the process. The writer can never predict the reader's response, beyond the bare recognition of words. Sometimes even that is a stretch. It is important to consider the writer's intentions and hopes when reading a passage, but a theoretical account of reading must go well beyond the "intended effects" of the writer's act. > > . . . At this point, I do not think we are talking about information >expressed in symbolic form any more. > My view is that symbols are related to real objects and processes in two ways: (1) Semantically, as in the case of a word or phrase referring to an object or event, and (2) By an act of interpretation, as in the case of reading a pattern of dots on a terminal. On my view, there is no process in any brain or any computer which is *in itself* a symbolic representation, expression, or manipulation. To make the claim that some object or process is symbolic, it is required that an interpretation of the process be specified. The fact that a process is digital, or that the process is defined by a program, or that the process results in the generation of recognizable English inscriptions is by no means definitive of being a "symbolic process". Analog, parallel, or unprogrammed processes are just as likely to be "symbolic" as are digital processes. >What ARE we talking about, then? Quite honestly, I'm not really sure. We're talking about a normative property - "... is a symbol". One important feature of normative properties is that they cannot be defined directly in terms of physical properties. A normative property is defined indirectly, in terms of the possibility of discovering an interpretation. For example, any pattern of dots whatsoever can be used to represent the letter "A". As long as the intended receiver is able to interpret the message in its context, the communication will succeed. One way to understand my claim that "all information can be expressed ... in symbols" is to read it as the claim that all interpretations of physical phenomena into systems of any sort can be translated into a second interpretation of the phenomenon into a symbol system. So my claim reduces (I'd say) to Church's Thesis - no system has more expressive power than arithmetic. That is *not* to say that everything is symbolic, formal, or arithmetic. Events and emotions are real. Sounds and marks are real. Automatic computations are real. Symbols are abstract. John Haugeland gives a useful introduction to the process of interpretation in his introductory text, "Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea". This is a simplified presentation, but he discusses some of the more complex issues in a paper called "Weak Supervenience", published a few years ago in _The American Philosophical Quarterly_. (I disagree with his conclusion that there can be no psychological laws, but his presentation is excellent).