On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 11:25 AM, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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. > > Exactly. It is no different than concluding that brains cannot understand anything because inter-atomic forces do not understand anything. Jason -- 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.
