[Wittrs] Re: Searle's CRA and its Implications
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:41:41 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Gordon Swobe <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
<snip>
>
> The CRA illustrates two concepts:
>
> 1) Software/hardware systems cannot by virtue of running formal programs
> obtain understanding of the meanings of the symbols they manipulate.
>
> and
>
> 2) Given that the human brain/mind does understand the meanings of the
> symbols it manipulates, it must do something other than or in addition to the
> running of formal programs.
>
> -gts
It does not illustrate the first. All it illustrates is that such processes in
isolation (as stand alone processes) are not conscious and don't have
understanding. But it says nothing about combinations of such processes which
are still the same sorts of thing but capable of doing much more (more
extensive and complex information processing).
The problem is that the CR is too stripped down a system, too limited a picture
of what it means to understand Chinese. No one would argue that rote responding
(symbol matching), which is all the CR is doing, is what we mean by
understanding.
The question is what is it that brains do that produces what we recognize as
understanding since there is NO reason to think they are just engaged in rote
responding (symbol matching).
As to the second statement, we can agree that the brain must do something other
than rote responding (symbol matching) but there is nothing in the CR that
demonstrates that a more robust system doing many more things in a layered and
interactive way couldn't do what brains do and what the limited CR cannot do.
As Peter Brawley noted on another list: "You can't build a bicycle and expect
it to soar above the clouds like an airplane".
SWM
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