But why are they qualities of horses rather than rabbits?

Eventually you're going to have to concede that we use the word "horse" to talk about this type of animal rather than another, and so that's why this type of animal is a horse rather than something else.

Then as I keep asking, what evidence shows that humans can genuinely feel emotions but that computers/robots can't? Clearly it can't be empirical evidence because you're saying that outward behaviour can be "fake". So you have non-empirical evidence?

What does fully understanding maths consist of? Knowing the axioms, the rules of inference, and then being able to apply the latter to the former? So I'm provided with some input sentences, told what to do with them, and then output the result. — Michael

I was suggesting that understanding maths consists in more than merely knowing how to manipulate symbols; that it also consists in knowing why the symbols are manipulated the way they are. In any case it also depends on what you mean by "manipulate symbols". Can a calculator manipulate symbols? A computer?

Perhaps the input to which "grief" is the output? And if we go with something like the James-Lange theory then the input is physiological arousal. — Michael

Two questions here:

1. Who or what determines what the proper output is?

2. Do computers have physiological arousal?

Then as I keep asking, what evidence shows that humans can genuinely feel emotions but that computers/robots can't? Clearly it can't be empirical evidence because you're saying that outward behaviour can be "fake". So you have non-empirical evidence? — Michael

This is like asking how do I know computers/robots can't be sexually stimulated just because it can be faked.

How do you know what they can't?

1. Who or what determines what the proper output is? — Marchesk

The linguistic community.

2. Do computers have physiological arousal?

Maybe. What evidence allows us to justify an answer either way?

How do you know what they can't? — Michael

I don't know. How do you know a rock can't be sexually stimulated?

The linguistic community. — Michael

And computers form a linguistic community?

Maybe. What evidence allows us to justify an answer either way? — Michael

Something about machines not being animals, probably.

Something about machines not being animals, probably. — Marchesky

And what evidence shows that only animals experience sexual arousal?

And computers form a linguistic community?

They could. Or we could. After, all we're telling the computer the appropriate output given the input, just as we tell the young child the appropriate thing to say given what he sees.

And what evidence shows that only animals experience sexual arousal? — Michael

I don't know. I guess hurricanes might be aroused when they hit shore of a major city.

It probably has to do with animals being sexual, and needing to reproduce.

They could. — Michael

Are they, though? Have computers formed a linguistic community? Have they told us what the symbols of that community mean (or how they are used to use your definition of meaning)?

And being sexual means what? Feeling sexual arousal? You're just begging the question. And needing to reproduce means what? Having the desire to reproduce? You're just begging the question.

It seems clear to me that you don't have any evidence that humans can feel but that computers can't. It seems clear to me that this is just a dogmatic assertion. I'm not sure why you're so unwilling to admit this.

And being sexual means what? Feeling sexual arousal? You're just begging the question. And needing to reproduce means what? Having the desire to reproduce? You're just begging the question. — Michael

You can't be serious.

Yes. What's wrong with what I've said?

It seems clear to me that you don't have any evidence that humans can feel but that computers can't. It seems clear to me that this is just a dogmatic assertions. I'm not sure why you're so unwilling to admit this. — Michael

First off, you agree that there is something more to feeling than producing a symbolic representation of feeling in the proper context, correct?

Marchesk, stop avoiding. You said that your claim that humans can understand but that computers can't isn't dogma. You said that you have evidence. Tell me what that evidence is.

Marchesk, stop avoiding. You said that your claim that humans can understand but that computers can't isn't dogma. You said that you have evidence. Tell me what that evidence is. — Michael

Actually, my contention was that symbol manipulation alone doesn't result in understanding. If a computer can be arranged to do more than symbol manipulation, then I'm not claiming it can't understand, because I don't know at that point.

Searle's contention was that computers only manipulate symbols, however sophisticated.

Do computers do something more than produce the symbols we program them to produce in the proper situations? — Marchesk

This cuts both ways though, do humans/animals do something more than produce a programmed/hard-wired output in the proper situations?

Computers and robots have shown creativity and novelty within a specific domain.

In this post you said "we understand that people are doing something more than manipulating symbols" and "if a machine says it ... what we don't do is think that the machine feels our pain or empathizes". I asked you if there's evidence to support these beliefs or if it's just dogma. You said that it's not dogma.

So I'm still waiting for the evidence that shows that people are doing more than manipulating symbols and that computers aren't.

So I'm still waiting for the evidence that shows that people are doing more than manipulating symbols and that computers aren't. — Michael

The reason is because symbol manipulation alone undermines itself. In order for there to be symbols to compute, the symbols have to be defined. Chinese symbols without Chinese speakers aren't actually symbols. They're random markings.

The word or emoticon for grief isn't a word or emoticon if there is no grief. It either means something else, or nothing at all. You have to have the grief first before there can be a symbol invented to represent it.

The argument here is that symbols can't be primary or fundamental. They are derived, invented, created to aid in communication or thinking.

This cuts both ways though, do humans/animals do something more than produce a programmed/hard-wired output in the proper situations? — Soylent

Yes, since they don't always produce the same output. Animals, and particularly humans, display a great deal of flexibility and variability There is also a question of what determines the proper situation. What is proper in a given situation? Often, human culture defines that.

An example for the wild is an offspring nest where a video camera was setup and streamed online. The mother, for unknown reasons, started attacking the offspring chicks, and failed to feed them properly. That doesn't make much sense from an evolutionary point of view, but life is messy.

Computers and robots have shown creativity and novelty within a specific domain. — Soylent

True.

So I'm still waiting for the evidence that shows that people are doing more than manipulating symbols and that computers aren't. — Michael

Before language, there were animals who experienced and felt. That's what's fundamental. Language is late in the game. Symbols are parasitic.

You ask how I know that a computer can't feel. That's missing the point. Symbols can't feel. To the extent that a computer only manipulates symbols, it isn't feeling or knowing anything, because there is no knowledge or feeling in symbols themselves, only what they stand in for.

Before language, there were animals who experienced and felt. That's what's fundamental. Language is late in the game. Symbols are parasitic. — Marchesk

Indeed. Michael earlier remarked that we teach children how to respond appropriately to linguistic inputs. He meant to analogize this with the action of programming a computer. But your remark here illustrates why this analogy is misleading.

Before children come to master appropriate rules of grammar and grasp semantical world-word connections, they already have desires, sensations, yearnings, bodily skills and social relationships. Proper linguistic performance isn't taught to them by means of explicit instructions; the teaching of language rather consists in a further re-shaping of an already actualized embodied form of life. This immature (i.e. pre-linguistic) form of human behavior sustains the ascription of meaningful (albeit merely proto-conceptual) mental states. The mode of teaching is broadly proleptical (anticipative) rather than explicit. That is, there is no need to assume that the child understands what it is shown to him/her that s/he ought to do and say in response to determinate circumstances or verbal instructions. The child's (proto-)linguistic behavior is shaped holistically in a way that sustains intentional ascriptions to him/her of determinate (conceptual) thought contents only very approximately at first, and then, gradually, more determinately, as the meanings of the terms that he/she uses progressively dawn of him/her (as a constitutive result of his/her ability to use them properly in wider ranges of circumstances).

You'd have to ask a biologist that one (my hope is that in this tedium you see the error).

Eventually you're going to have to concede that we use the word "horse" to talk about this type of animal rather than another, and so that's why this type of animal is a horse rather than something else.

Again, no, horses aren't horses because we call them 'horses.' That's dumb, because they would go on being horses even if we called them something else. In fact, most people in history have called them something totally different, yet they were still horses for all that.

Obviously people do more than manipulate symbols when they use language: for one, they employ these symbols in social settings for various purposes.

As the old analogy goes, a Martian who knew how to manipulate a chess board to produce all legal moves would still not know how to play, without understanding that one is trying to win. Focusing on symbol manipulation only ignores semantics and pragmatics, without which language is incoherent, and whittled away to an idle assembly of abstractions.

Again, no, horses aren't horses because we call them 'horses.' That's dumb, because they would go on being horses even if we called them something else. In fact, most people in history have called them something totally different, yet they were still horses for all that. — TheGreatWhatever

This is like saying that even if I change my name to Andrew then I would go on being Michael. But this is wrong. I'm Michael because I'm called Michael, and if I was called Andrew then I'd be Andrew.

You confuse "to be a horse is to have qualities A, B, and C because we use the word "horse" to name those things which have qualities A, B, and C" with "X has qualities X, Y, and Z iff we use the word 'horse' to name it" (as if calling a thing by that name gives it those properties and not calling a thing by that name removes those properties from it). I'm saying the former, not the latter. Nobody says the latter.

It is not like saying that. Common nouns are property-denoting, while names are not. There is of course a sense in which you are still Michael, even if we consider counterfactual situations we consider that your name has changed -- this is obvious from the fact that even in considering such counterfactual situations, we can still call you Michael in the current one: so we can say, 'If he had his name changed to Andrew, Michael would be pretty upset,' or, 'in this imagined scenario, Michael's name is Andrew,' where in both caes we intend the name 'Michael' to scope beneath the modal. However, there is ultimately nothing to being a Michael than being an appropriate referent of 'Michael.'

However, being a horse requires you to be a certain kind of creature -- it does not require you to be called 'horse,' nor does your being called 'horse' make you a horse. This is obvious from the fact that there were horses before the word 'horse' existed, and further calling them something different would not make them not horses, nor would calling rabbits horses make them horses, and not rabbits. Consider that if your position were correct, we could literally turn rabbits into horses by changing the way we called them. But this is not so.

You confuse "to be a horse is to have qualities A, B, and C because we use the word "horse" to name those things which have qualities A, B, and C" with "X has qualities X, Y, and Z iff we use the word 'horse' to name it" (as if calling a thing by that name gives it those properties and not calling a thing by that name removes those properties from it). I'm saying the former, not the latter. Nobody says the latter. — Michael

But your own position is committing you to the latter, which is what I am trying to show you. That you deny it doesn't matter. If your position is:

"To be a horse is to have qualities A, B and C because we use the word 'horse' to name things which have qualities A, B, and C:" it follows from this that if we use the word 'horse' instead to name things that have the qualities of rabbits, then rabbits would be horses. And since they were not horses before, surely even you will admit, you are committed to saying we can turn rabbits into horses by calling them 'horse.' But since we can't, your position is wrong.

"To be a horse is to have qualities A, B and C because we use the word 'horse' to name things which have qualities A, B, and C:" it follows from this that if we use the word 'horse' instead to name things that have the qualities of rabbits, then rabbits would be horses. And since they were not horses before, surely even you will admit, you are committed to saying we can turn rabbits into horses by calling them 'horse.' But since we can't, your position is wrong. — TheGreatWhatever

That's not how it works. We have two sets of properties; {A, B, C} and {X,Y, Z}. At T₁ we say that those things that have the properties in the first set are named "horse" and those things that have the properties in the second set are named "rabbit". So to be a horse is have to properties A, B, and C and to be a rabbit is to have properties X, Y, and Z.

At T₂ we decide to name those things that have the properties in the first set "rabbit" and those things that have the properties in the second set "horse". So to be a horse is to have properties X, Y, and Z and to be a rabbit is to have properties A, B, and C.

At T₁, Animal 1 has properties A, B, and C, and so is a horse. At T₂, Animal 1 has properties A, B, and C, and so is a rabbit.

I'm certainly not saying that because at T₂ we name Animal 1 "rabbit" that it has the properties X, Y, and Z. What you're doing is conflating.

Yes, since they don't always produce the same output. Animals, and particularly humans, display a great deal of flexibility and variability There is also a question of what determines the proper situation. What is proper in a given situation? Often, human culture defines that.

An example for the wild is an offspring nest where a video camera was setup and streamed online. The mother, for unknown reasons, started attacking the offspring chicks, and failed to feed them properly. That doesn't make much sense from an evolutionary point of view, but life is messy. — Marchesk

That you cite an example of programming gone wrong might handicap rather than help your cause. When everything goes as it should there is mystery, but when it goes awry we make judgements about software or hardware malfunctions. The mother attacking the chicks is outside the normal output behaviour and curiosity might lead to an examination of the mother's physiology, wherein a discovery of some physical abnormality is given explanatory power for the behaviour. Computers can malfunction in much the same way. When the output is wrong, we can examine the software code or the hardware parts for a flaw.

The problem I see with the Chinese Room and your above example is that if you buy into the computational theory of mind you can see how each respectively fits into the theory. Alternatively, if you think there's something missing, you see how each respectively demonstrates that position as well. The analogies seem only to illustrate confirmation biases in intuition rather than insight into what is really going on.