On Thu, Sept 13, 2012 Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: > The menu is not the meal. >
In other words X is not "X" and that is perfectly true, use and mention are indeed not the same, but they are closely related. > To my mind, the fact that you have particular animus toward the Chinese > Room can only be because on some level you know that it is a relatively > simple way of proving something that you are in deep denial about. Why else > would it bother you in particular? > Searle's Chinese Room bothers me because it is so fabulously DUMB! What makes it so idiotic is its conclusion: The funny little man doesn't understand anything therefore the entire Chinese Room doesn't understand anything. Dumb dumb dumb. Searle doesn't even attempt to explain why if there is understanding anywhere it must be centered on the silly little man, apparently he's such a crumby philosopher it never even occurred to him that he's assuming the very thing he's trying to prove!! Even Aristotle never did anything that stupid. You could easily get rid of the little man altogether and replace him with a 1950's punch card sorting machine, it would be slow but mush faster than the man and produce fewer errors, and in such a situation I would agree that the punch card machine was not conscious, and I would also agree that a very very small part of a system, any system, does not have all the properties of the entire system. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
