On 27/10/2015 8:16 am, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Tuesday, 27 October 2015, John Clark <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
so where does semantic content come from?
From examples in the physical world. You can give as many
botanical definitions of the word "tree" as you want but it will
just be a word defined by other words that are themselves defined
by yet more words that are.... If you tried to dig for meaning all
you'd find is a endless loop, it would just be a game where words
are manipulated according to the rules of botany until somebody
forgot about definitions and pointed to the ASCII string
"t-r-e-e" and then pointed to a large photosynthesizing organism
made largely of cellulose that exists in the physical world. Then
even a martian would notice a correspondence between this game of
manipulating symbols called "botany" that humans had invented and
the way these large photosynthesizing organism made largely of
cellulose live.
What about a virtual world with trees and observers, and no I/O
devices connecting it to outside trees?
I think Brent answered this in his response to Russell. The trees of the
ordinary physical world do not connect with anything outside this world
either in order to have semantic content. A virtual world would be no
different in this respect. The point is that the content comes from
something other formal symbol manipulation -- things such as pointing
and sensory responses. There has to be something other than the
consciousness with which the consciousness can interact.
Bruce
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