[Wittrs] Re: The Meaning of Knowing Meanings
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 12:55:40 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Gordon Swobe <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> > The question on the table, though, is what does the
> > associative process between inputted symbols and retained
> > representations that we call "understanding" amount to?
>
> No.
>
> Just trying to help you understand and acknwoledge the 3rd axiom. Nothing
> else. It's not complicated.
>
It's all of a piece, Gordon. The third premise doesn't stand alone or mean
anything by itself. It is part of the fabric of an argument, a set of claims.
Moreover, it is not self-evidently true except in the minds of those who think
it is in which case it can only be said to seem true to them. The question then
is what can we do to discover what level of objectively assessable truth is
represented by this claim?
Is the causal interpretation of the third premise true for those who think it
is and untrue for those who think it isn't? Or is there something objective
here we can invoke to oblige agreement between reasonable people?
Obviously I think it is quite evident that only the non-identity interpretation
of the words meets the criterion of being self-evidently true while the
non-causal interpretation is not self-evidently true at all because of the
possibility (indeed, the probablility) of the system level property picture of
understanding (and of other features of mind).
But if someone (you?) does not SEE the possibility of explaining understanding
as a function of a complex system, then the other interpretation (that
understanding attaches as an irreducible feature or property to some physical
events but not to others), looks compelling, i.e. the absence of any
understanding in the CR looks like compelling evidence that nothing in the CR
(which, we agree, is equivalent to what we find in computers) can have
understanding.
SO EVERYTHING HINGES ON HOW WE CONCEIVE OF CONSCIOUSNESS (meaning the features
of consciousness, including, but not limited to, understanding).
So long as you cling to the conviction that understanding is an irreducible
property of some sort whose absence in the CR is evidence of the incapacity of
the CR to ever understand anything, you will not see that the claim that the
causal interpretation of the third premise is true is NOT established by the
CR. And if it's not, the entire CRA collapses.
Note, however, that I am NOT arguing that the non-identity interpretation is
untrue. I am saying, rather, that your conception of consciousness and
understanding lead you to conflate the non-identity claim with a non-causal one
and that that is the big mistake of the CRA.
> If you want to know what symbols mean, you will need to know more than their
> shapes and more than some shape-based rules for manipulating those shapes.
>
> Right?
>
> Yes or no.
>
> -gts
Again, Gordon, I have already answered this. Why do you keep asking the same
question over and over again while refusing to even acknowledge (let alone
answer) the questions I have posed?
As with your penchant for arguing by insisting, you are here doing much the
same thing by attempting to argue by badgering me.
But I know there is little hope that I will get you to recognize this at this
point so I will not stand on ceremony here and I will AGAIN answer your
repetitive question in hopes that maybe you will do the same with regard to the
question I have posed to you!
Answer: When I learn a language, or how to read and write, I learn the rules
for how the symbols or sounds relate to one another within a broader context of
mental associations that I have. That is, we don't learn a language in
isolation but within a context. The contexts can be broader or narrower but,
typically, they involve a depth of mental pictures we carry about with us about
the world. (Think of the man in the cartoon looking at a Chinese ideogram and
thinking of an image of a horse! For god's sake Gordon, stop and think of THAT
image and what it implies!)
As Dennett says in that passage I quoted here a while back, more is going on
when one understands something than merely the relating of one symbol to
another according to a recipe, a la certain fixed rules. As Dennett notes, the
reason the CR doesn't have understanding is that it isn't doing all that
additional stuff. ALL IT IS CAPABLE OF DOING (given its specs) is matching one
squiggle to another squoggle (as Searle has put it).
But Dennett says this is the trick of the CRA for we are asked to wonder how
can more of the same do anything different than what the processes in isolation
do?
Dennett's answer relies on the understanding that a mental feature like
understanding is a system level property. He says there is a whole range of
associations that get made in a brain that constitute what it means to
understand. Of course the CR, being a mere rote response machine, isn't doing
any of that so it is missing the added operations the brain has and so,
naturally, cannot do what the brain does.
But then one cannot draw a general conclusion about other configurations of the
processes found in the CR that may be robust enough to actually DO what brains
do! See the point, Gordon?
Now I know I am probably wasting my time because you have so far simply ignored
this point everytime I've made it while declining to even acknowledge my
questions but continuously and repetitively asking yours -- all the while
pretending I haven't given you an answer. (I think you must read only a little
of what I actually write because you rarely respond completely to the full
range of my points and your responses seem to reflect only a spotty familiarity
with what I've said -- so either you aren't reading in full or you aren't
processing what you read.)
Nevertheless, I will now ask MY question again. If you have managed to get this
far, do please favor me with a response this time:
HAVING READ MY ACCOUNT OF UNDERSTANDING ABOVE (REPEATED FROM PREVIOUS POSTS
WHICH YOU SEEM TO HAVE JUST OVERLOOKED), DO YOU ACCEPT THIS ACCOUNT OR DO YOU
THINK IT IS MISTAKEN AND, IF MISTAKEN, WHAT IS YOUR BETTER ACCOUNT?
THAT IS: WHAT IS YOUR ACCOUNT OF UNDERSTANDING?
SWM
>
>
> You don't
>
> --- On Tue, 4/13/10, SWM <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
><snip>
> > Gordon Swobe <wittrsamr@> wrote:
> >
> > > --- On Tue, 4/13/10, SWM <wittrsamr@> wrote:
> > >
> > > > We certainly can understand symbols by knowing
> > the shapes and rules
> > > > for manipulating them according to their shapes.
> > That's how we read and
> > > > write, after all.
> > >
> > > No. The meanings of symbols don't inhere in their
> > shapes or in the rules of manipulating them by shape.
> > >
> > I didn't say the meanings "inhere in their shapes or in the
> > rules of manipulating them by shape". I said I learn the
> > shapes and rules and thereby come to understand their
> > meaning by learning this stuff. Yes, something more IS going
> > on and that is what I have been asking you to explicate from
> > your perspective. After all, a mindless mechanism doesn't
> > learn, it is something entities like ourselves do.
> >
> > What is it to understand on your view?
> >
<snip>
> >
> > The question on the table, though, is what does the
> > associative process between inputted symbols and retained
> > representations that we call "understanding" amount to?
> >
> > What is it that the human brain qua machine does and how
> > might it do it and why would that be any different, in type,
> > from what some manufactured device of sufficient
> > sophistication might be able to do?
> >
<snip>
> >
> > So would you now be kind enough to give us your account,
> > Gordon, of what it means to understand if you don't agree
> > with the account I have just given? Or, if you do, just say
> > so and I will accept that.
> >
> >
> > > If they did then you could understand this sentence
> > written in a language you don't know merely from looking at
> > the shapes of the symbols and the manner in which the shapes
> > relate. But you cannot come to understand symbols in that
> > fashion. Right, Stuart? Right?
> > >
> > > =gtd
> >
> > Again you are missing the point, Gordon. I AM NOT CLAIMING
> > TO UNDERSTAND BY LEARNING ABSTRACT RULES OF MANIPULATION. I
> > am claiming that we learn to understand by learning the
> > rules as part of a very deep associative process going on in
> > our brains and that it is that associative process,
> > understood as lots of mindless processes working together to
> > produce the sense of having a mind that is what we mean by
> > HAVING A MIND.
> > Those processes are on a par with the various computational
> > processes or operations on a computer, i.e., they are
> > physically implemented, mindless and part of a highly
> > complex system of connected and interactive operations.
<snip>
> >
> > Your mistake here (I don't think Searle makes this one,
> > though) is to confuse what we mean by manipulation of
> > squiggles and squoggles on our level of operation with the
> > manipulation implemented by a mindless entity on a much
> > deeper level.
> >
> > You, Gordon, confuse the man in the machine with the
> > machine itself whereas Searle, to his credit, recognizes
> > that the man may not be a real CPU in and of himself but, in
> > fact, he plays one on TV qua the CR.
> >
> > SWM
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