On Monday, October 26, 2015, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote: > On 27/10/2015 8:16 am, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > On Tuesday, 27 October 2015, John Clark <[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.
I take it you've never played video games. Jason > > Bruce > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
