From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Challenge
Keywords: Searle, Chinese Room
Date: 11 Apr 92 00:48:18 GMT
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine

In article <1992Apr7.222046.16470@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
|In article <511@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
|
|>I may not have a *detailed* model of how semantics emerges on top of
|>an essentially 'syntactic' functionality, but I do have an outline model.
|
|If you do, I (and presumably others) would be interested in seeing it.

It has already been presented many time, it is the association/relationship
model.  It seems to me to explain all of the observational data about
humans, so it reamins a viable model.

|>I do not believe that any amount of pure reason (without observational
|>evidence) will ever show such a thing to be impossible, or possible.
|
|Care to defend this view?  

Quite simple really.  Reasoning is only as good as the axioms, and the axioms
are only as good as the evidence for them.

Then there is historical experience.  Unexamined axioms have repeatedly,
and even regularly, turned out to be invalid.  This is called the history
of science.

It used to be assumed that life had to involve some special, unique force,
different from the forces controlling inanimate matter.  This was called
the 'elan vital'.  It was proven wrong, we now know that life is based on
perfectly ordinary chemistry and physics, the same as everything else.

That is just one example, there are many others. [Like my experience on
a researchg project into the formation of the resting stage (cyst) in a
certain amoeba - where everyone's prior assumptions proved wrong].

|>It will only be through research on living minds and on computational
|>modelling that a detailed model can possibly be derived, or be shown
|>to be impossible.
|
|What *empirical* evidence would count?

Just about any, I am not too picky.

A good, emperically based model of human consciousness would help.
So would an operational trace of a computer program purporting to be
conscious.

| Remember that we are arguing over
|whether having the appropriate behaviour is sufficient evidence for
|having a mind.  I may be wrong, but I see *no* way in which this is
|amenable to empirical investigation.  

Hmm, if that is what we are arguing over, then we may not really disagree.
I thought we were arguing over whether it is possible for computers to
achieve consciousness.  That *is* emperically verifyable, at least in
principle.

|>And I have yet to see an argument supporting 'no semantics from syntax'
|>that does not equally apply to the human brain.  No one has yet provided
|>a compelling, observatianally verified, model of how the *brain* could
|>generate semantics in any other way.
|>
|
|g., angels dancing on pinheads.  The claim being made is that
|we have independent reasons for ruling out functionalism as well, namely,
|that syntax is insufficient of itself to yield semantics.  The truth of this
|claim is independent of whether we *do* know how the brain does what it does. 

But, since I have yet to be convinced that this is indeed a valid point,
it is no argument to me.  To prove that functionalism is invalid to *me*
you must show that it is observationally inconsistant with huamn behavior.

Neither you, nor anyone else has so far done so.  And so, for now, I take
it as a working hypothesis about how the human brain functions.  I will
continue to do so until it is either inconsistant with observation to do so,
or a better, more realistic model is supplied to take its place.

By realistic, I mean a model that does not invoke mysterious, ineffible
abstractions, but is firmly grounded in physics and/or chemistry.

Given the abysmal history of such things, I am extremely reluctant to
accept any model that grants extraordinary qualities to the human mind.
[Humans are not the center of the Universe, so why should we be special?]
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy