HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ard@cs.bham.ac.uk (Antoni Diller)
Newsgroups: sci.cognitive
Subject: Re: John Searle
Date: 17 Dec 92 16:12:41 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK

In article <dubin.724099279@spot.Colorado.EDU> dubin@spot.colorado.edu writes:
>csa33@keele.ac.uk (H.S. Nwana) writes:
>
>>Mentioning the name Searle seems to provoke so much bashing.
>
>>We all know these arguments will go on and on. Perhaps spelling 
>>out the implications of whatever belief/view we hold will be of more use.
>
>I want to agree strongly with these last two thoughts.  I am strongly
>persuasded by Benson Mates in his book Skeptical Essays that not only
>will these arguments go on and on, but indeed they MUST because they
>are philosophically intrinsically intractible, in the same way as the
>Liar's Paradox IS a paradox.
>

I see no reason to believe that the issues that Searle discusses are
philosophically intrinsically intractible.  If you look at the history
of philosophy, you can see definate progress and the solution of many
philosophical problems.  Quine in his paper ``Five Milestone's of
Empiricism'' mentions five issues on which modern philosophy is superior
to older empiricism.  Eg, we know talk about words and language rather
than ideas (as Hume, et al. talked about); most philosophers will see
the sentence as the primary bearer of meaning rather than the word;
I've forgotton the others except for the fifth which is that many
philosophers have given up the idea of a first philosophy.


Antoni Diller
Newsgroups: sci.cognitive
From: danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny)
Subject: Re: Searle
Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Australia
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 03:32:36 GMT

In article <1992Dec12.230319.23885@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>
>"Machines can't think" is explicitly *not* one of the axioms in
>Searles' argument.  He believes that machines can think, since he
>believes that brains are machines (he states this explicitly).  What
>he *does* believe is that machines can't think (or, more accurately,
>possess semantics) purely on the basis of their formal structure, and
>this belief is itself derived from the axioms I provided in another posting.

No, I know Searle claims he's a materialist.  I am not saying he uses
an axiom that machines can't think in his arguments, what I am saying 
is that he gives the impression of someone who *believes* that machines 
can't think and *therefore* tries to prove it.  I don't think there's 
anything wrong with this (fides quarens intellectum, I think the phrase 
is), I was just curious as to whether this was the case or not.  This
is not something one can answer from knowledge of Searle's arguments -
you would have to know something about him personally to answer it.

Danny.
Newsgroups: sci.cognitive
From: Mark W. Dubin
Subject: Re: John Searle
Originator: dubin@spot.Colorado.EDU
Reply-To: dubin@spot.colorado.edu
Organization: Univ. of Colorado-Boulder
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 18:41:19 GMT

csa33@keele.ac.uk (H.S. Nwana) writes:

>Mentioning the name Searle seems to provoke so much bashing.

>We all know these arguments will go on and on. Perhaps spelling 
>out the implications of whatever belief/view we hold will be of more use.

I want to agree strongly with these last two thoughts.  I am strongly
persuasded by Benson Mates in his book Skeptical Essays that not only
will these arguments go on and on, but indeed they MUST because they
are philosophically intrinsically intractible, in the same way as the
Liar's Paradox IS a paradox.

Given that then I believe that ALL we seem able to do is "spell out
the implications" of one or another belief.  Now, that may seem 
too annoying to us to be working on things so fundamentally based
in belief; it doesn't look like science or like intellectual inquiry.
So, let's use the word axiom rather than belief, and perhaps that
will let us all pretend to be happy.

I happen to find working from Searle's axioms to be useful, interesting 
and satisfying, but then again I am a Dewey-based pragmatist.

--the ol' professor
From: charles@capmkt.COM (Charles Neveu)
Newsgroups: sci.cognitive
Subject: Re: John Searle
Date: 12 Dec 92 05:50:03 GMT
Organization: Capital Market Technology

michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>In article <766@capmkt.COM> charles@capmkt.COM (Charles Neveu) writes:
>>michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>>Then how can one claim that the Chinese Room, based upon an objective
>>description and analysis of its structure (the basis of Searle's
>>argument), doesn't not really understand Chinese but only simulates
>>understanding of Chinese, which to Searle are two very different
>>things? 
>In brief, because the Chinese Room, like all computers, merely manipulates
>"marks" (using the term "symbol" carries incorrect connotations) in a
>purely syntactic manner.  This won't get you semantics, which is the
>basis of understanding.  

This brings me back to my original question: How do you know when you
"get semantics" and when you don't, solely by looking at the structure
of the organism? How about an equally contrived counter-example of a
non-brain type thing that does understand Chinese, because it "has
semantics"? 

>I'd suggest that you read _Minds, Brains, and Science_ by Searle if you
>want a short, simple introduction to Searle's view of the mind.
Ok. 
>Alternatively, you could read the original "Minds, Brains, and Programs"
>in the 1983 issue of Behavioral and Brain Sciences (I don't know which
>issue specifically).  [...]

Read it when it came out.  I've sat in on Searle's lectures on this
subject, (as well Dreyfus') but it still bothers me, because I can't
seem to get my question about a counter-example answered to my
satisfaction. And it's a question, I think, worth pursuing.

 >Or, you could go to comp.ai.philosophy, [...]

Yikes! I'll stay here. 

Charles Neveu    neveu@milo.berkeley.edu
Neurology Unit
U.C. Berkeley





Newsgroups: sci.cognitive
From: danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny)
Subject: Re: John Searle
Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Australia
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 01:57:05 GMT

In article <1992Dec15.173641.17791@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>Well, to take the old chestnut of qualia, how do you objectively determine
>that what I see as red is the same sensation of colour as what you see
>as red?  How do you know that I don't see red things as being blue?  As
>far as I (and most philosophers) can tell, there is no objective criteria
>to rule out the possibility of "inverted spectra".  Yet, presumably you
>agree that I do *in fact* have a sensation of colour, and that this could
>in principle be different from yours, even though we respond behaviourally
>in exactly the same way.  This is a case of something real (namely experience)
>being inaccessible to objective observation.  I would argue that *all* of
>consciousness is like this.  

OK.  If there are no differing causal consequences at all between your 
sensation of colour and mine then I would argue that your sensation of 
colour is the same as mine.  What's the point in postulating some additional 
property to make them different? (I still need a shave, despite my fondness 
for the Razor :)

>>>This may not be a satisfactory state of affairs for those who want
>>>answers to everything, but it is also certainly no justification for
>>>then defining consciousness in a way that is epistemically accessible
>>>but wrong, as I take it Searle believes that functionalists have done.

>>Ummm...  I'd rather have a theory that worked a bit, that we might learn
>>something from disproving, than bury my head in the sand and say "we
>>cannot know".
>
>I'd rather have a theory that was right, even if it meant we cannot know.
>If you want to "learn something", isn't it more efficient to study the
>"something" rather than an intractable problem?  (You must have supported
>the space program primarily because of its spinoffs like Velcro and Tang :-)

I am not arguing we should stick with a false theory.  I am arguing that
we may at least learn something from the failures of such a theory, the
alternative you suggest is not an alternative: to say that consciousness 
has ontological status but is epistemologically intractable is NOT a theory, 
it is basically saying there is no such thing as consciousness!!  -  or 
rather that there is something called consciousness, but we can't ever know 
about it, so it obviously it has no observable consequences and plays no 
causal role in the universe.  What's the point?  How on earth is this any 
use at all? I think that Razor needs sharpening!

There is an invisible/untouchable pink elephant that follows you around 
everywhere, but because it is invisible/untouchable/etc. you can NEVER 
know it exists.

>>We MUST know, we SHALL know.

I was just quoting Hilbert.  In the context he spoke this, it has actually
been proven false (Go:del's theorem).

Danny.
Newsgroups: sci.cognitive
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: John Searle
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 17:30:23 GMT

In article <Bz5uv8.FyF@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:

>It's about consciousness.  Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
>Searle phrases it in terms of intentionality, but that's because he
>thinks that consciousness is required for intentionality (see his
>1990 BBS paper).  This has caused no end of confusion.
>
Let's not confuse things with agendas here, Dave. M,B,&P was about
understanding (in the sense of understanding one's language.
The new book (and the 1990 article) is explicitly about consciousness.
If you want to argue that the former is, for Searle, part and parcel
of the latter, that's fine. I've been working very hard here, however,
to separate people's opinion of the CR from those about the new book.
In the end, the consciousness question is the important one, I think.

-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: qualia
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1992 00:46:12 GMT

In article <BzIq0w.GLy@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <1992Dec19.052445.25173@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>
>>NO NO NO YOU NINNY!!! under functionalism, brain stuff will never tell you
>>about MIND stuff. (Whata dope!)
>
>Even apart from the typo, this is just silly.  Presumably we're all
>functionalists about car engines (to be a car engine is to be something
>that plays the appropriate sort of causal role in a car), but you can
>find out an awful lot about engines by looking under the hood.
>
It may, but it needn't, is the point. I may have overstated the case,
but I was trying to distinguish type-identity theory from the
token-identity theory for someone who apparently hadn't heard the
news.

-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1
Newsgroups: sci.cognitive
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: John Searle
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 17:23:45 GMT

In article <773@capmkt.COM> charles@capmkt.COM (Charles Neveu) writes:
>
>Right! And he believes that the CR doesn't have it. I want to know how
>to analyze other 'somethings', and to be able to potentially conclude
>that they do have intentionality. So what do I look for?
>
I'm not sure why you've had so much trouble finding Searle's answer to
this. He's been pretty up-front about it.  The passage below comes from
p. 75 of the new book _Rediscovery of mind_:

"I am completely convinced that my dog, as well as other higher animals,
has conscious mental states, such a visual experiences, feelings of pain, and
sensations of thirst and hunger, and of cold and heat.  Now why am I so
convinced of that? The standard answer is because of the dog's behavior,
becuase by obsering his behavior I infer that he has mental states like 
my own. I think this answer is mistaken.  It isn't just because the dog
behaves in a way that is appropriate to having consious mental states, but 
also because I can see that the causal basis of the behavior in the dog's
physiology is relevantly like my own. It isn't just that the dog has a
structure like my own and that he has behavior that is interpretable
in way analogous to the way that I interpret my own. But rather, it is in the
combination of these two facts that I can see that the behavior is appropriate
and that it has the appropriate *causation* in the underlying physiology.
I can see, for example, that these are the dog's ears; this is his skin,
these are his eyes; that if you pinch his skin, you get behavior appropriate
to pinching skin; if you shout in his ear, you get behaviors appropriate
to shouting in ears."

If you want the reat, you'll just have to buy the book, I guess.


-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1
From: ard@cs.bham.ac.uk (Antoni Diller)
Newsgroups: sci.cognitive
Subject: Re: John Searle
Date: 17 Dec 92 16:18:55 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK

In article <1992Dec15.173641.17791@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>In article <1992Dec14.033936.11786@cs.su.oz.au> danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny) writes:
>
>Well, to take the old chestnut of qualia, how do you objectively determine
>that what I see as red is the same sensation of colour as what you see
>as red?  How do you know that I don't see red things as being blue? 
>- michael

So long as we can successfully communicate, then it doesn't matter
if your experience of the sky is similar to mine.  Colour blind people
can learn how to use colour words and so, for that matter, can people
totally blind from birth.  The fact that such blind people cannot distinguish
red from blue does not mean that they don't understand the meanings of
those words.

Antoni Diller
Newsgroups: sci.cognitive
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: qualia
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 05:22:47 GMT

In article <BILL.92Dec18121653@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu> bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>
>   > The point is that there is no *necessity* that our sensations be 
>   > equivalent, and indeed, that there is no way of telling if they
>   > *are*.  There is simply *no* objective, scientific way for you
>   > to address my claim that what you see as a sensation of red I
>   > see as a sensation of blue.  This is the problem... 
>
>Well, there is *one* way: we look at what's going on in the brain in
>the two cases.  If you're a materialist, you must believe that the
>answer is in there, somehow.  The only problem is that we can't quite
>*do* it yet, but it's a problem of technology, not principle.

"Somehow" leaves an awful lot of slack, and does *not* rule out principled
problems. In fact, the most popular analysis of the mind-brain relation
poses just such a principled problem. If you're a token identity materialist
(as all functionalists are) then although mind stuff supervenes on brain
stuff, brain stuff will never tell you about brain stuff. There's another
big problem as well, and I suspect that this is waht Michael means: qualia
are inherently subjective, the brain is not. Therefore, by Leibniz's nasty
old law, they cannot be identical, and therefore you're just wrong.

>
>	-- Bill


-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1
Newsgroups: sci.cognitive
From: danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny)
Subject: Re: John Searle
Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Australia
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 00:29:07 GMT

In article <1992Dec18.003427.2149@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>The point is that there is no *necessity* that our sensations be
>equivalent, and indeed, that there is no way of telling if they
>*are*.  There is simply *no* objective, scientific way for you
>to address my claim that what you see as a sensation of red I
>see as a sensation of blue.  This is the problem... 

I have no problem with this.

>*No* popular account of consciousness (assuming dualism isn't popular)
>gives a causal role to it.  Functionalism certainly doesn't - there is
>no reason to ascribe "consciousness" to certain functional arrangements
>except for sake of discursive simplicity (i.e., "intentional stance").
>*Nobody* who's a materialist has a clue how consciousness could have
>causal efficacy.  (This may be all the worse for materialism, but
>that's another story...)

Well if it has no causal consequences why on earth would we want to believe
there is such a thing?

Danny.
Newsgroups: sci.cognitive
From: danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny)
Subject: Re: John Searle
Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Australia
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 07:26:42 GMT

In article <1992Dec11.055845.1886@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>In article <1992Dec11.022041.23380@cs.su.oz.au> danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny) writes:
>>But imagine a 6 year old who
>>has never seen anyone bleed, has never been taught any biology - is his
>>assumption that his parents have intentionality any less "reasonable" than
>>anyone elses?
>
>Assuming knowledge is something akin to "justified true belief", the
>6-years-old's knowledge is, I would think, less justified than yours
>or mine.  That doesn't mean, however, that s/he doesn't believe it.
>S/he's probably had little in the ay of evidence disconfirming the
>hypothesis that his/her parents are intentional. Actually, children

I would dispute this...  I don't see that a neurobiologist's belief in
human intentionality is any more justified than anyone elses.  She may
in fact be less adept at interpreting/understanding human emotions and
feelings.  But what you say about a six year old having had less
experience seems more plausible - one's adoption of the intentional stance
is surely more reasonable the longer one has used it and found it to work.

In short I still don't see what biology has to do with intentionality.  
I know Searle THINKS the latter is somehow dependent on the former, but 
he doesn't seem to be able to give any coherent definition either of 
what intentionality is or of how it depends on biology.  Appeal to 
mysterious "causal properties of biological systems" is more than a 
little unhelpful!

Danny.
Newsgroups: sci.cognitive
From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: John Searle
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 21:45:36 GMT

In article <1992Dec13.173023.8592@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:

>>It's about consciousness.  Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
>>Searle phrases it in terms of intentionality, but that's because he
>>thinks that consciousness is required for intentionality (see his
>>1990 BBS paper).  This has caused no end of confusion.
>>
>Let's not confuse things with agendas here, Dave. M,B,&P was about
>understanding (in the sense of understanding one's language.
>The new book (and the 1990 article) is explicitly about consciousness.
>If you want to argue that the former is, for Searle, part and parcel
>of the latter, that's fine. I've been working very hard here, however,
>to separate people's opinion of the CR from those about the new book.
>In the end, the consciousness question is the important one, I think.

The later book only makes explicit the view which is implicit earlier.
A careful reading of Searle's earlier work makes it clear that
consciousness is the real issue (the first-person viewpoint is what
counts for real thinking).  Phrasing the argument in terms of
understanding confused things, because the claim (*) "The CR doesn't
understand" is actually a combination of two claims, (1) "The CR isn't
conscious", and (2) "no understanding without consciousness".  Many AI
people have attacked (*) without taking a position on (1), effectively
by questioning (2), although of course this is all implicit.  But (2)
is at best a side issue -- the real issue for "strong AI" is (1), and
the debate would have been clearer if things had been phrased that way
all along.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."
From: charles@capmkt.COM (Charles Neveu)
Newsgroups: sci.cognitive
Subject: Re: John Searle
Date: 12 Dec 92 06:25:54 GMT
Organization: Capital Market Technology

michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
[...]
>>This doesn't help me if you are a Thing From Another World. If you act
>>like you think, and I open your head and find, say, it's full of worms
>>instead of B, I can't conclude anything either way. All I have is the
>>observation that don't have B. Just like if I open your head and find
>>a Chinese Room: I can't conclude anything.
>>What I want is a program (in the broad sense) to analyze the worms and
>>be able to draw some conclusions; it should be possible.

>Why "should" it be possible?  Is this a moral imperative (God wouldn't
>put us in the position of being unable to determine if a thing is
>conscious...)?  

Because I can think of a few things off the top of my head, like
temperature above absolute zero, some sort of directed energy that
could be moving information around, etc.

>What Searle is arguing (at least as I understand it, and
>argued for in a class paper several years ago) is that, whatever "should"
>be, it simply *is* the case that we cannot detect consciousness by objective
>means.  [...] This doesn't say anything about "thinking", but I don't
>see why you changed your terminology, since "thinking" can simply be
>defined in terms of behavioural output (that which thinks is that
>which acts like it thinks), whereas it's impossible for me to imagine
>such a move with consciousness.  
>In other words, with "thinking" the problem can simply be defined away.

That's why I changed my terminology: I consider it axiomatic that
consciousness can't be detected objectively (not that what I consider
axiomatic is of any interest; I'm just trying to make clear what I'm
asking).  I'm not interested in trying answer the question "Is it
conscious?"  If the controversy surrounding the CR is about
consciousness, then I have been totally confused. But I don't think it
is. I think it is about thinking or understanding. And I think the
point of Searle's CR article is that with "thinking" the problem
*can't* be defined away. Searle objectively analyzes a system, and
says that even though it's functioning like an understanding system,
it really isn't. I want to know how to objectively analyze a different
system and come to the opposite conclusion. It can't just reduce to
"If it ain't a brain, it ain't thinkin'", and I don't think anyone
believes that it does.

Charles Neveu   neveu@milo.berkeley.edu
Neurology Unit
UCBerkeley
Newsgroups: sci.space