On 10/27/2015 12:10 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 27 October 2015 at 17:32, Brent Meeker <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On 10/26/2015 2:16 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:On Tuesday, 27 October 2015, John Clark <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Russell Standish wrote: Modus ponens is only a formal manipulation of symbols, with no semantic content. I agree. Stathis Papaioannou Wrote: This is an argument John Searle has made. Unfortunately yes. The problem is, the brain can also be described as manipulating symbols with no semantic content Yes. > 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?The observer's use of the word "tree" would have the semantic content of referring to a (virtual) tree.In effect, intrinsically meaningless symbols would bootstrap themselves into being meaningful, without reference to outside reality.
Sure. Do you think the meaning you assign to "tree" requires some supernatural reality above and beyond the existence of trees in this world. It's not that there were meaningless symbols and then they did something to become meaningful. They were invented to convey meaning about things that were already observed.
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