hi,
thanks for your answer.
"F. Frank LeFever" wrote:
>> I would, however, not make a dichotomy between the hypothetical room
> and humans simply on the basis of its poverty of semantic associations
> (lack of tactile information about snow, etc.); some of us humans have
> richer semantic networks than others.
Sure. But if we had _no_ semantic associations at all we would
probably not be able to understand the meaning of any symbol. Again,
this is not a psychological intuition, but a logical point: If all you
knew about an object was it's name and place in a system of element
relations (Elementschaftsrelationen, not sure if this is the correct
english term) between objects, from all of which you also knew
nothing but their element relations, it would be impossible to
identify the object in the world.
If, for example, all element relations which are necessary to answer
Chinese questions could be established in the realm of classes of
numbers and individual numbers (what I can't prove, but seems quite
natural to me), you could not decide whether "snow is blue" means
'snow is blue' or, say, '7 is greater than 91'. But if one can't
decide this there is a crucial sense in which one does not understand
the sentence "snow is blue".
> He seems, however, to be making a dichotomy on a more troubling basis:
> ability to "feel" (and/or have sensory "experiences", appreciate
> "phenomenal qualities", etc.), by which he clearly means something more
> than ability to "use tactile information" (or any other information via
> any other sensory input). [...]
> This is the great MYSTERY, which may be too fundamental to be resolved:
> our private "experience".
Yes. I would like to treat the Chinese room argument separate from
consciousness, but as you carefully noticed, I didn't succeed.
> We cannot go beyond this to give them the "information" which would
> GIVE them the same experience, the same "sensation" that we have.
This is of course exactly the point of the argument I tried to convey.
Experience can not (at least not entirely) be given to others via
symbolic communication. Symbolic communication presupposes experience
as the basis of symbolic content.
> but for Searles and others to
> assert that nothing but a living brain can EVER, "feel" or "be
> conscious" is in itself a leap of faith, which unfortunately is rearely
> made explicit.
As far as I know, Searle does not propose such a strong thesis. His
arguments are mainly concerned with showing that syntacic manipulation
of symbols is not sufficient, and, as I tried to explain, there is at
least some sense in this claim.
Admittedly, discussions on this issue are generally rather
unpleasant, because both sides just refuse to take serious the
arguments of the other side and instead simply claim that other
views are absurd. Just look at Jim Balter, who even plonked me now
because I told him (via PM) that I don't consider insults as
convincing arguments.
> Searles did ALLUDE to this problem of definition of
> "consciousness" early in his presentation to the ARNMD meeting last
> December, but I waited in vain for him to explicitly address this
> problem; he didn't thatt day.
I can imagine that. ;-)
Searle has the habit of avoiding difficulties. And defining
consciousness is very difficult indeed.
Regards,
Wolfgang.
--
homepage: http://www.wald.org/wolfgang
"Wo kaemen wir hin, wenn jeder sagte: 'wo kaemen wir hin?' und keiner
ginge, um zu sehen, wohin wir kaemen, wenn wir gingen?"
