But she understands the sentences in the Martha-specific language which uses Chinese characters. Just as I understand the word "bite" in English. — Michael

We can agree on that. Searle's contention is stronger. He was arguing against the notion that a computer could understand Chinese like a human being does. Applying a different meaning to "understand" and then claiming that Searle has it wrong is to miss what he was arguing against.

If we want to say that the Chinese room understands Chinese in a rule-following or symbol manipulation manner, then okay. That would be like saying that Siri understands when it's cold outside because she says, "Brrrr, it's 15 degrees outside". But of course she doesn't know what it means to be cold.

Saying that Martha doesn't understand the sentences because she doesn't understand how to use them in the world is like saying that I don't understand the word "bite" because I don't understand how the French use it. — Michael

Which is the same as saying that Martha doesn't understand Chinese, right? The point being that languages are used in context of a world, not a lookup table or by consulting a dictionary, or applying some bayesian algorithm.

Let's say we give a test subject a rulebook and then feed them sets of symbols. For example, whenever they see:

å ß ∂

Then they write down:

ç

Now do these symbols mean anything? Does the set of rules for computing the correct symbol (or symbols) result in some sort of understanding?

And I'll grant that there is an understanding (given a certain meaning of the word) in how to go from one set of symbols to another (based on the rules). But is that what we're doing when we speak? Searle's contention is that it is not, such that the Chinese room can't be said to understand Chinese.

Since math is being brought up, let's take the symbols 1 and +. We can of course tell a computer to compute 1 + 1. It will give us back a new symbol, 2. And we could teach a young child to memorize or lookup the results of addition. Whenever they see 1 + 1, they say or write two. An idiot savant might be able to memorize adding (or multiplying) very large numbers, which would be computer like.

But that's not understanding. 1 + 1 means something. It means you can take one of any individual item and put it together with one of any other individual item and have two items. And that's how kids start off learning how to do basic math. They use beads or marbles or whatever. They don't just blindly memorize the rules for symbol manipulation.

That comes in later math classes, which has been a bone of contention and motivation for educational reforms in math (although it goes back to having kids use the multiplication table to get the result of say 3 times 7 without understanding what that means).

This seems question-begging. I just don't see how the Chinese Room demonstrates one way or the other that humans understand symbols in a different way than the aggregate of the system. Or if humans do understand symbols differently, why we should exclude the notion that a sophisticated system can also understand symbols, albeit differently. — Soylent

Let's put it a different way. Symbols stand in for whatever it is that we understand. They're an abstraction. The claim Searle is making is that no amount of symbol manipulation gets you to understanding, because understanding isn't in the symbols. The symbols represent or encode for some agreed upon meaning.

What I was trying to do with Martha the !Kung speaker, and the arbitrary sets of random symbols is to show that understanding is something other than symbolic computation (manipulation). To Martha, Chinese and English are the same as some random symbols that don't mean anything. And that is exactly what symbols are to a computer.

Humans understand the symbols the system is outputting. But does the system? Searle was objecting to a strong notion of AI in which computers could achieve real understanding. He was also objecting to the idea that our brains are basically symbol manipulators (computational theory of mind).

If we take a Wittgensteinian approach to language, knowing what a sentence means is knowing how to use that sentence — Michael

But by this, did Wittgenstein mean knowing how to transform one sentence into another, or did he mean knowing how to use it in the world?

It's the difference between looking up a word in a dictionary, and being able to use that word in various contexts, such as might come up in conversation.

That's the question I asked. When it comes to maths, doesn't understanding consist in knowing how to manipulate the symbols, or at least knowing what to do with the input (e.g. plot a graph)? — Michael

No, understanding math is like understanding programming. You can use both in situations you haven't encountered before.

When I was taught derivative functions I was taught to move the power to the left of the letter and then reduce the power by one such that x3 becomes 3x2 — Michael

And what does that get you? How do you use it to solve problems or accomplish tasks?

Birth sucks, life sucks, we all know it. — The Great Whatever

So succinct. Should be a meme.

Maybe so, but a lot of criticisms I come across are system replies, so I thought maybe if it was stated differently, it would be clearer that the "systems reply" doesn't work.

My question wasn't about what Marx thought motivated everyone. My question was, "What happens to people who labor when machines take their place (when production is fully automated)? — Bitter Crank

If we do get to the place where machines can perform all human labor, will we also automate decision making? CEOs, Judges and Politicians are only fallible human beings who have to sleep and take breaks.

Maybe the machines will compute the optimal society and distribute accordingly?

Anyway, it sounds like you're talking about a post-scarcity society where no human need work. There will still be some jobs in entertainment and the sex industry out of preference, maybe crafts and what not. But nobody will need to work.

That's one version. The other is the rich and powerful own all the machines and the rest of us eat the crumbs from their tables. Probably grounds for a terrible revolution, but if the rich own the military (which could largely be automated as well), then they may be able to hold on.

If we're talking about being angry at a storm or cancer, then you might have a point. But we're talking about murder, as in one human taking another human's life.

Also, I don't get where self-hatred comes into play here. The family grieves the loss of a loved one and wants justice, since someone is at fault. Society wants the murderer put away.

And how does the alternative offer an explanation? Rather than just say "we experience X" the 'explanation' is "we experience X because something other than the experience happens". Is that really much of an explanation? Seems like a God-of-the-gaps.

And perhaps there is no explanation. Explanations must come to an end somewhere. So why not at the phenomenal? — Michael

The problem here Michael is that we prosecute crimes as if there is an explanation, and something did happen beyond "we experience X".

Take for example someone charged with a murder and the defense maintains that it was an accident. Maybe the victim fell down the stairs instead of being pushed, or what have you. Maybe the accused didn't even see it happen. Now, is there a truth to what happened? If no, then why does society bother trying to figure out? Why investigate, why prosecute, why convict?

The specialization and fragmentation of society is what we would expect under capitalism, and as all occupations become something which must produce goods or services which are marketable, everyone specializes into their niche. — Moliere

You could probably replace capitalism with civilization. Specialization comes with the rise of civilization. It's not new.

People start out with different premises and start arguing form there. If your metaphysics is fundamentally different than mine, then of course we're not going to agree on lots of things, no matter how good or bad the arguments presented are.

The explanation only matters to the extent that it provides useful predictions. It's a backformed validation. — Landru Guide Us

Predictions are about validation. Usefulness is a matter of technological application. And not all scientific theories are useful in the everyday sense of building bridges and practicing dentistry, which aren't scientific endeavors, btw, although they utilize the results from biology, chemistry and physics.

How practical do you suppose the inflationary model of the Big Bang is?

Anyway, the reason prediction is an important part of science is not because it's useful, first and foremost, but because it provides empirical support. Useful results are about applying science. That's in the realm of engineering or medicine.

The primary motivation for doing science is to understand the world, and then secondly, to make use of that understanding when possible (which isn't always). As usual, you conflate technology with science.

The "problems" are good things, not bad things, for science. — Landru Guide Us

The problems suggests that QM has foundational issues. When you can't make heads or tails over something behaving like a wave in one experiment, but behaving like a particle in another, then maybe things need to be rethought to make better sense of the experimental results.

But in any case, whether particles popped into existence or didn't isn't a philosophical issue; it's an empirical one. — Landru Guide Us

But what does it mean for something to pop into existence? Is that an adequate explanation for what's going on when a detector goes off in a vacuum? Perhaps there is a better one that doesn't lead to paradoxical notions.

Edit: I see your reply was to Moliere. Jumped the gun a bit.

And naturally you missed the point of the article, which as that changing from viewing the fundamental constituents of physics as fields and particles to properties and their relations, gets rid of many of the problems with QM leading to various interpretations. That's what philosophy can offer science.

And the author of that SA article did mention instrumentalism, but thought that most scientists believed that science was about reality, otherwise why do it? As such, particles and fields were to be considered ontological commitments by physicists, not just useful models. Change the ontological commitments, and some of the problems with QM dissipate.

I just read a philosophical article on QM in the magazine Scientific American. It was interesting because it discussed universals, materialism, and tropes. The author put forward an argument that the classical notion of particles and fields leads to QM weirdness. But if we abandon those ontological commitments in favor of properties and relations, then we can dispense with the weirdness.

For example, a detector can register a particle in a vacuum, which is definitely weird. Particle ontology leads to thinking that particles can somehow pop into and out of existence. But if rather we think of the vacuum itself having properties, then a detector can register a particle when those properties are in the right arrangement. So we don't need to think the particle popped into existence. Rather, properties of the vacuum were related in just the right way to make the detector go off. Conceptually, we call that a particle of some kind.

Similarly, you can dispense with the weirdness from particle/wave duality, if it's just bundles of properties, rather than thinking somehow the electron is particle when you measure it one way, and a wave when you mesure it a different way.

That was rather enlightening, and I think a way forward. It's a good example of how philosophy can help scientists clarify their concepts when they run into baffling results. You can't put tropes to the test. They are a metaphysical concept. But what they do is make QM a bit less baffling.

I only have interest in philosophy to the extent that it asks interesting questions. If it exists to undermine itself, then I'd rather waste time thinking about something else.

Relationships like e=mc2 are an expression of the functioning empirical world. To ask whether, for example, e=mc2 exists doesn't make sense. It's not a state of the world. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Maybe. It is curious though how well something like e=mc2 works. As if there is something more than just the observables.

It's a statement that describes (and predicts) empirical phenomena. — Michael

Right, but it employs math and theoretical entities, as John mentioned.

Right, so as I said before you're adopting scientific realism. But the internal realist wouldn't adopt scientific realism. They'd adopt something like instrumentalism or model-dependent realism. — Michael

In the context of scientific laws and theories, it's more a matter of rationalism vs empiricism, where empiricism alone can't get you to something like e=mc2. And it also goes back to Plato and the universalism debate. The shadows on the cave wall don't give you the forms. In scientific terms, the empirical data doesn't provide the theory. That's something humans add to make sense of the data. The realist question is whether that addition exists independent of us, or is made up by us, or is due to our constitution as cognitive agents (Kantian categories).

E=MC2 is not an empirical statement. It belongs to the the theoretical side of science. Nobody observes an equation, or law of physics. Rather, theory is used to make sense of observation.

there is nothing about them that, in virtue of the books they've read and where they grew up, can possibly surprising about what they think or do. — The Great Whatever

I very much doubt that. It's more like the genius has the ambition to pursue whatever is surprising about them, and is able to succeed at that, such that they gain recognition. We make a little too much out of inborn talent, and not enough of motivation and hard work.

Take someone who is the world's best in chess or an athletic endeavor. How did they get to be so good? Tons of practice and love of what they do. They may have had other advantages over the average person, but you don't get to be great without a ton of effort.

That makes sense, although the explanation for the origin and regularity of phenomena is relegated to the utterly mysterious.

The part that causally explains phenomena, yes. But in contrast to the metaphysical realist, the internal realist rejects the claim that any of the more meaningful things we talk about – "the chair exists", "the cat is on the mat", "e = mc2" etc. – say anything about these non-internal parts of the world. — Michael

What motivates the internal realist to be an internal realist as opposed to a phenomenalist? Why think there is some sort of mind-independent machinery that we can't talk about? I suppose it's the same reason Kant thought there was noumena, but it suffers from the same problems.

The realist just needs to show that their conception of mind-independence isn't such that it requires an ideal theory to be completely untrue.

To put it another way, the realist does not need to maintain that our experiences and thoughts are entirely different from reality. What matters is that the world is not dependent on us.

Then you've begged the question and presupposed that the world of appearance is something like the mind-independent world. — Michael

I'm providing an argument against one of the criticisms of realism, which is that an ideal theory could be completely untrue. It's a move available for realists to make. The criticism arises from one understanding of realism. But if the realist adds that the mind is dependent on the real such that an ideal theory can't be entirely wrong, then they have a rebuttal.

Right, but I'm not arguing for noumena. That's Kant's notion, which I reject.

In which case you can't make an argument that appearances depend on something else — Michael

You need to add "entirely unlike appearance" to make that work. If reality is entirely unlike anything we perceive or conceive or talk about, then we have no basis to say there is such a reality. But I'm not stating that. I'm stating that what we perceive, think and say is dependent on that reality such that we can't be totally in the dark.

That doesn't follow. That A depends on B is not that an understanding of A gives us an understanding of B. — Michael

It follows that we can't make an argument that A depends on B if we don't understand anything about B. It's like saying we could be BIVs, but the brain and the vat aren't anything like brains and vats that we experience.

So what are they then, and how could that scenario possibly hold? You see, the BIV gets it's meaning from what we experience.

What gives the skeptical scenarios of being a BIV or in the Matrix, it's all a dream, or Descartes's demon power is that we understand well what those scenarios mean. What is problematic for the noumena is that we can't know what it is, by definition.

It could be that whatever is in the vat is nothing like the brain as we understand it and that whatever this thing is in is nothing like a vat as we understand it. — Michael

In which case I would just deny the thought experiment as being incoherent, since it can't even say what being envatted means. That coincides nicely with the OP. If mind is dependent on mind-independent reality, then you can't have an arrangement entirely outside our understanding giving rise to our understanding.

Which also means that I deny the possibility of Kant's noumena - the thing in itself of which we cannot say anything about.

If we're brains-in-a-vat then a theory "which meets all observational data and satisfies every theoretical constraint" might fail to say anything about the world outside the vat (which, according to realism, would be the real world). — Michael

Let's say that BIVs are possible. What could an ideal theory say about the world outside the vat? Well, it could say a lot, actually. Consider that the brain in a vat is like the brain in appearance fed to that brain. Which means that neuroscience, chemistry and physics are all similar. Otherwise, you don't have an envatted brain, since the notion depends on the kinds of brains the BIV has in experience, which all depend on physics, chemistry, etc being a certain way.

If we're brains-in-a-vat — Michael

Assuming we could be brains in a vat. I have my doubts.

"The crucial point is that mind is dependent on a mind-independent world for realists, and as such, an ideal theory is constrained by a mind-independent world."

Yes, that seems like an accurate description of realism. — Michael

Right, but it's important because it means that our thoughts about the world can't be entirely different from the world, on a realist account. Which means that the world can't be entirely different, but not because it's mind-dependent, rather the opposite.

What I said was that the anti-realist will also say that an ideal theory is constrained by reality. — Michael

Okay fine, but that doesn't mean the same thing. Anyway, I was responding to one critique of realism, which is that and ideal theory could still be false for realists. And that's problematic.

"Realism" and "real" mean different things. The realist is free to tell us what "realism" means but not what "real " means. — Michael

The realist is certainly free to use "reality" to mean mind-independence, or verification transcendence, or whatever to mean that the world is independent of our perceptions, conceptual schemes, and linguistic practices. The anti-realist might not wish to use the word "real" that way, but that's what the realist means, so it's bordering on absurd to argue over what the realist means when employing use of the word "reality".

The realist doesn't have ownership over the word "real". "Reality" isn't realist terminology. It's English terminology. — Michael

But in context of metaphysical realism, the realist does get ownership over the word "real', because they are espousing realism.

Even if they don't, it's not the anti-realists job to tell the realist that they can't employ "real" the way they do to put forth their position, which is what you did in your initial response to the OP. I was putting forth a realist rebuttal to criticism of realism by virtue of an ideal argument being potentially false, and you criticized my use of the word "reality".