On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 1:50 AM, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > On 10/26/2015 4:52 PM, Jason Resch wrote: > > > > On Monday, October 26, 2015, Bruce Kellett < <[email protected]> > [email protected]> wrote: > > On 27/10/2015 8:16 am, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > > On Tuesday, 27 October 2015, John Clark < <[email protected]> > [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. > > > Can you play a video game "in your head" in an environment whose elements > have no referents in the world of your experience? > Sure I think so. People see pretty crazy things on various drugs. > All the video games I've ever seen have environments very much like this > one with just a some mixing up of attributes. > > 2001: A Space Odyssey was pretty out there. How different does a movie/game have to be from our reality before it becomes something that turns anyone who watches it into a p-zombie? Jason -- 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.
