[Wittrs] Re: The CRA: Is the Third Premise True?
- From: Gordon Swobe <gts_2000@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2010 15:27:14 -0700 (PDT)
As we have seen, Searle holds that the Chinese Room scenario shows that one
cannot get semantics from syntax alone. In formal systems, rules are given for
syntax, and this procedure appears to be quite independent of semantics. One
specifies the basic symbol set and some rules for manipulating strings to
produce new ones. These rules are purely formal or syntactic—they are applied
to strings of symbols solely in virtue of their syntax or form. A semantics, if
any, for the symbol system must be provided separately. And if one wishes to
show that interesting additional relationships hold between the syntactic
operations and semantics, such as that the symbol manipulations preserve truth,
one must provide sometimes complex meta-proofs to show this. So on the face of
it, semantics is quite independent of syntax for artificial languages, and one
cannot get semantics from syntax alone. "Formal symbols by themselves can never
be enough for mental contents,
because the symbols, by definition, have no meaning (or interpretation, or
semantics) except insofar as someone outside the system gives it to them"
(Searle 1989, 45).
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/#5.1
-gts
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