But even if you accept that, it by no means implies that computing machines cannot understand language.
Therefore his conclusion that consciousness is bound to some kind of biological excretion is totally unwarrented. — hypericin
Like the weather or a carburettor, the neural collective is actually pushing and shoving against the real world.
That then is the semantics that breathes life into the syntax. And that is also the semantics that is missing if a brain, a carburettor or the weather is reduced to a mere syntactical simulation. — apokrisis
I don't think that a carburettor will function as a referring symbol merely by functioning as an actual carburettor, but only by performing a semantic, referential function, and being pointed at things. — bongo fury
For car drivers, it is the accelerator pedal that is the mechanical switch which connects to their entropic desires. The symbol that is "in mind". — apokrisis
Isn't that overly simplistic in that the point of intentional action just triggers a whole range of prearranged links in the machine and unknown and at times unknowable interfaces with the environment? — magritte
You can plug a simulation into the world, for example a robot, feed it inputs, and it could drive it's body and modify the world. — hypericin
conclusion that consciousness is bound to some kind of biological excretion is totally unwarrented. — hypericin
But then it is no longer just a simulation, is it? — apokrisis
Searle does not disagree with the notion that machines can have consciousness and understanding, because, as he writes, "we are precisely such machines".[5] Searle holds that the brain is, in fact, a machine, but that the brain gives rise to consciousness and understanding using machinery that is non-computational. If neuroscience is able to isolate the mechanical process that gives rise to consciousness, then Searle grants that it may be possible to create machines that have consciousness and understanding. — Wiki
Really? As soon as you attach inputs and outputs to the robot brain, it is no longer a simulation? — hypericin
So, if the Chinese room simulated a famous Chinese general, and it received orders which the laborers laboriously translated, and then computed a reply, and based on this orders were given to troops, it is not a simulation? Seems absurd. — hypericin
The narrow conclusion of the argument is that programming a digital computer may make it appear to understand language but could not produce real understanding. Hence the “Turing Test” is inadequate.
Searle argues that the thought experiment underscores the fact that computers merely use syntactic rules to manipulate symbol strings, but have no understanding of meaning or semantics.
The broader conclusion of the argument is that the theory that human minds are computer-like computational or information processing systems is refuted. Instead minds must result from biological processes — SEP article
Predictions are simulations in your head, and predictions have causal power. We all run simulations of other minds in our minds as we attempt to determine the reasoning behind some behaviour.Simulations have no real effects on the world. — apokrisis
The problem with the "Chinese" room is that the rules in the room are not for understanding Chinese. Those are not the same rules that Chinese people learned or use to understand Chinese. So Searle is making a category error in labeling it a "Chinese Room".Searle argues that the thought experiment underscores the fact that computers merely use syntactic rules to manipulate symbol strings, but have no understanding of meaning or semantics. — SEP article
The problem with the "Chinese" room is that the rules in the room are not for understanding Chinese. Those are not the same rules that Chinese people learned or use to understand Chinese. — Harry Hindu
but that the brain gives rise to consciousness and understanding using machinery that is non-computational — Mijin
Predictions are simulations in your head, and predictions have causal power. We all run simulations of other minds in our minds as we attempt to determine the reasoning behind some behaviour. — Harry Hindu
Like the weather or a carburettor, the neural collective is actually pushing and shoving against the real world.
That then is the semantics that breathes life into the syntax. And that is also the semantics that is missing if a brain, a carburettor or the weather is reduced to a mere syntactical simulation. — apokrisis
But there is a middle ground which Searle seems to overlook: Computional machines which are not turing machine, and yet is purely informational. Such a machine has no ties to the matter which instantiates it. And yet, it is not a Turing machine, it does not process symbols in order to simulate or emulate other computations. It embodies the computations. Just like us. — hypericin
Any questions? — Daemon
But he seems to have overlooked it.... or something he's overlooked. — Mijin
If neuroscience is able to isolate the mechanical process that gives rise to consciousness, then Searle grants that it may be possible to create machines that have consciousness and understanding — Searle
Books merely present information, they don't process it.And how is the Chinese room general more than the equivalent of a book I’m this thought experiment? — apokrisis
But that was my point... that there are only one set of rules for understanding Chinese, and both humans and computers would use the same rules for understanding Chinese. I don't see a difference between how computers work and how humans work. We both have sensory inputs and we process those inputs to produce outputs based on logical rules.I think you're getting things back to front. The room is set up to replicate the way a computer works, the kinds of rules it works with. It's not trying to replicate the way humans work, the kinds of rules we use to understand language. So Searle is showing why a digital computer can't understand language. — Daemon
Against the AI symbol processing story, Searle points out that a computer might simulate the weather, but simulated weather will never make you wet. Likewise, a simulated carburettor will never drive a car. Simulations have no real effects on the world.
And so it is with the brain and its neurons. It may look like a computational pattern at one level. But that pattern spinning can't be divorced from the environment that is being regulated in realtime. Like the weather or a carburettor, the neural collective is actually pushing and shoving against the real world.
That then is the semantics that breathes life into the syntax. And that is also the semantics that is missing if a brain, a carburettor or the weather is reduced to a mere syntactical simulation. — apokrisis
He presents a false dichotomy:
* Consciousness cannot be emulated by a Turing machine
* Therefore, it must be physical, not informational, and can only be reproduced with the right mechanical process.
But what if consciousness is informational, not physical, and is emergent from a certain processing of information? And what if that emergence doesn't happen if a Turing machine emulates that processing? — hypericin
I don't know what this means. Present physical states are informative of prior physical states. I don't see how you can have something that is physical that is also absent information. The only process that is needed for information to be present is the process of causation.Therefore, it must be physical, not informational, and can only be reproduced with the right mechanical process. — hypericin
But my point is that any simulation can trivially be made to "push against the world" by supplying it with inputs and outputs. But it is absurd to suggest that this is enough to make a non-conscious simulation conscious. — hypericin
This undifferentiated view of the universe, life, and brains as all computation is of no value for exploring what we mean by the epistemic cut because it simply includes, by definition, and without distinction, dynamic and statistical laws, description and construction, measurement and control, living and nonliving, and matter and mind as some unknown kinds of computation, and consequently misses the foundational issues of what goes on within the epistemic cuts in all these cases. All such arguments that fail to recognize the necessity of an epistemic cut are inherently mystical or metaphysical and therefore undecidable by any empirical or objective criteria
Living systems as-we-know-them use a hybrid of both discrete symbolic and physical dynamic behavior to implement the genotype-phenotype epistemic cut. There is good reason for this. The source and function of genetic information in organisms is different from the source and function of information in physics. In physics new information is obtained only by measurement and, as a pure science, used only passively, to know that rather than to know how, in Ryle's terms. Measuring devices are designed and constructed based on theory. In contrast, organisms obtain new genetic information only by natural selection and make active use of information to know how, that is, to construct and control. Life is constructed, but only by trial and error, or mutation and selection, not by theory and design. Genetic information is therefore very expensive in terms of the many deaths and extinctions necessary to find new, more successful descriptions. This high cost of genetic information suggests an obvious principle that there is no more genetic information than is necessary for survival.
If artificial life is to inform philosophy, physics, and biology it must address the implementation of epistemic cuts. Von Neumann recognized the logical necessity of the description-construction cut for open-ended evolvability, but he also knew that a completely axiomatic, formal, or implementation-independent model of life is inadequate, because the course of evolution depends on the speed, efficiency, and reliability of implementing descriptions as constraints in a dynamical milieu.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221531066_Artificial_Life_Needs_a_Real_Epistemology
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.