What's the problem with referents? — TheMadFool

The clear liquid that flows in rivers and the oceans that at times becomes solid and cold, and at other times is invisible vapor is the referent of the word "water". — TheMadFool

Well, I don't know why people make such a big deal of understanding — TheMadFool

referents — TheMadFool

I hope you reply soon to this query. — TheMadFool

They don't have to be but they can be, no? — TheMadFool

I expect that you, like "they" in the story, haven't even considered that "referents" might have to be actual things out in the world?
— bongo fury

Yes, I did consider that. — TheMadFool

Referents can be almost anything, from physical objects to abstract concepts. — TheMadFool

Searle's argument doesn't stand up to careful scrutiny for the simple reason that semantics are simply acts of linking words to their referents. Just consider the sentence, "dogs eat meat". The semantic part of this sentence consists of matching the words "dog" with a particular animal, "eat" with an act, and "meat" with flesh, i.e. to their referents and that's it, nothing more, nothing less. Understanding is simply a match-the-following exercise, something a computer can easily accomplish. — TheMadFool

I wish I could locate the youtube footage of Searle's wry account of early replies to his vivid demonstration (the chinese room) that so-called "cognitive scripts" mistook syntax for semantics. Something like, "so they said, ok we'll program the semantics into it too, but of course what they came back with was just more syntax". — bongo fury

Do you deny the existence of universal concepts in our language? — Marchesk

I really have no idea how to answer that question. — Snakes Alive

Is the question, for example, how we can use the same word for multiple things? How it is that 'apple' can refer to multiple fruits, for example? — Snakes Alive

It's an interesting line of investigation for sure, — Isaac

particularly the actions AI would have to demonstrate before we're prepared to label them 'rational'. — Isaac

But that's a very different topic — Isaac

and I don't want to derail the thread talking about it. — Isaac

What is also interesting about this, and more related to the thread, — Isaac

, is the way in which the criteria for the term 'rational' are being created post hoc to reflect the way we'd like things to be. — Isaac

We've all been using the word 'rational' (or it's equivalent) for 2000 years. What on earth is a discussion about what it means doing 2000 years later! — Isaac

This claim is either meaningless or amenable to empirical evidence. Is our ability to reason and navigate grounded in our ability to discern meaning? If it isn't, what would be different about the world, how would we notice? — Isaac

magical thinking [...] "animals don't think rationally like us because.... I really, really don't want them to" — Isaac

Is the question, for example, how we can use the same word for multiple things? How it is that 'apple' can refer to multiple fruits, for example?
— Snakes Alive

That’s close! — Wayfarer

foundations of math, psychology of consciousness, theory of reference, theory of learning, logic of induction, semiotics etc — bongo fury

I don't see that there is anything in eternalism per se that precludes motion, unless you define it as such. — ChatteringMonkey

... objects are arranged in space in an orderly way. Their arrangement can be described without referring to "passage of space" or some equivalent of motion. — Echarmion

I didn't want to allude some sort of is-ought-fallacy, where racism or xenophobia are (more) acceptable because they are in some way "natural". — Echarmion

I just wanted to point out, partially from personal experience, that not being prejudiced is really hard, — Echarmion

and that there are mental mechanisms (wherever they come from) that introduce and reinforce prejudice, of which racism is a subtype. — Echarmion

Just refusing to say the word "black" won't keep your brain from noticing that "these guys over there look different", and if you don't pay attention, your brain may turn "different" into "dangerous". — Echarmion

Racism is part of the human condition. — Echarmion

OK. I guess my point is that if we ultimately reduce 'semantic' to pointing symbols...that at some point AI may satisfy our intuition. — path

IMV, Derrida was making the kind of point that I'm trying to make, dissolving some pure subject or consciousness into social linguistic conventions. — path

There is an infallible predictor,...

Nozick avoids this issue by positing that the predictor's predictions are "almost certainly" correct, thus sidestepping any issues of infallibility and causality.

It isn't possible to win $0 or $1,001,000 and so those alleged outcomes ought not be considered. — Michael

The A.I. produces “elaboration graphs" on a screen. For the MacBeth question, the program produced about 20 boxes containing information such as “Lady Mac­beth is Macbeth’s wife” and “Macbeth murders Duncan.” Below that were lines connecting to other boxes, connecting explicit and inferred elements of the story. — Frank Pray

I think Searle was a bot. — path

Why is he so sure that he is swimming in something semantic? An appeal to intuition? 'I promise you, I can see redness!' — path

And what do those symbols refer to? Not the symbols themselves, but actual chips and dip. So somehow you need to get the symbols to relate to actual chips and dip. — InPitzotl

This essay says it much better than I ever could https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer — Wayfarer

I challenged researchers there to account for intelligent human behaviour without reference to any aspect of the IP metaphor. They couldn’t do it, and when I politely raised the issue in subsequent email communications, they still had nothing to offer months later. They saw the problem. They didn’t dismiss the challenge as trivial. But they couldn’t offer an alternative. — Robert Epstein: The Empty Brain

I'm not sure that being sexually attracted to other races is proof of lack of racism. — Hanover

The racism of me subconsciously favoring my tribe is a universal problem facing us all, — Hanover

So the picture one might choose — unenlightened

Well, I did try to keep my wordcount to a minimum. — TheMadFool

Perhaps that's where the fault lies. — TheMadFool

A clear distinction cannot be vague. Clear and vague are antonyms. — David Mo

What Whitehead would call perception in the mode of symbolic reference which comes after causal efficacy and immediate presentation. — prothero

And this is why using "consciousness" (self knowledge, self reference, self awareness) as a synonym for "experience" creates a problem. — prothero

Consciousness is a special kind of experience but without the lower orders of experience there would be no consciousness. — prothero

It [panpsychism] “explains” why my socks and bubblegum are conscious, even though no one thought they were, but it doesn’t explain why the human brain is conscious the way the human brain is conscious, which is what we actually want to know. — Zelebg

Really? So get a newborn, poke it with a sharp stick, does it feel anything? — bert1

At what point in the chain of being “existence” or “life” do you think this ability disappears working your way down. Do higher animals have experience? Ants? Bees? Flowers? — prothero

Somewhere below Primates, Cetaceans and possibly Elephants. — Isaac

Physicalism is not identical to eliminativism.
— Pfhorrest

No, but it is usually implied by it. — bongo fury

Which direction do you mean that implication to go? — Pfhorrest

Eliminativism is the view that consciousness is not real — bert1

Ok, so "first person perspective" wasn't some innocuous physical concept to do with frames of reference.
— bongo fury

I , as a panpsychist, think it is. — Pfhorrest

It’s only emergentism that makes it out to be anything metaphysically weird. — Pfhorrest

not invoking anything in addition to physical stuff, just a different perspective on that physical stuff. — Pfhorrest

Physicalism is not identical to eliminativism. — Pfhorrest

That person is not providing any answer at all to the question of phenomenal consciousness. — Pfhorrest

We don’t know if they think there is no such thing, — Pfhorrest

if it somehow emerges from nothing — Pfhorrest

And this perspective was already on the physicist's menu, or not?
— bongo fury

It depends on the physicist’s philosophical views. — Pfhorrest

some mysterious metaphysical having of a first person perspective — Pfhorrest

If he’s an eliminativist — Pfhorrest

then no, he denies that there is such a thing. — Pfhorrest

If he’s an emergentist then yes, — Pfhorrest

some mysterious metaphysical having of a first person perspective — Pfhorrest

where that completely different metaphysical thing started happening — Pfhorrest

Panpsychism simply says that... — Pfhorrest

No, I think it has already also required,

"some mysterious metaphysical having of a first person perspective"
— Pfhorrest

but doesn't seem keen to admit it. — bongo fury

It says that there is a first person perspective that is had, — Pfhorrest

Panpsychism simply says that [...] — Pfhorrest

some mysterious metaphysical having of a first person perspective — Pfhorrest

It [panpsychism] “explains” why my socks and bubblegum are conscious, even though no one thought they were, but it doesn’t explain why the human brain is conscious the way the human brain is conscious, which is what we actually want to know. — Zelebg

So what we think of a as — Pantagruel

then you can begin to see how immaterial things can participate in what we call consciousness — Pantagruel

I actually felt sorry for him! This sounds exactly like a machine figuring out that this whole consciousness thing was just something it was programmed to espouse. — hypericin

Sometimes a psychologist's most assiduous accounts of phenomena of mental imagery have the flavor of tracts by impassioned believers in flying saucers. — Goodman: Sights Unseen

The 'image' and the 'picture in the mind' have vanished; mythical inventions have been beneficially excised. — Goodman: Sights Unseen

After we spend an hour or so at one or another exhibition of abstract painting, everything tends to square off into geometric patches or swirl in circles or weave into textural arabesques, to sharpen into black and white or vibrate with new color consonances and dissonances." — Goodman: Ways of Worldmaking

You might find this old thread interesting : https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1308/aphantasia-and-p-zombies/p1 — csalisbury

Here's an account by a man who, at 30 years old, realized that other people could visualize things without seeing them.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/

He never could, and was unaware that anybody else could. He thought that phrases like 'mind's eye,' were figures of speech.

The medical term for this condition is called aphantasia. — The Great Whatever

How our lookings at pictures and our listenings to music inform what we encounter later and elsewhere is integral to them as cognitive. Music can inform perception not only of other sounds but also of the rhythms and patterns of what we see. Such cross-transference of structural properties seems to me a basic and important aspect of learning, not merely a matter for novel experimentation by composers, dancers, and painters. — Goodman: Languages of Art

I am not sure if Dennett's is an anti-representationalist stance. — Graeme M