On 10/27/2015 12:36 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 1:50 AM, Brent Meeker <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 10/26/2015 4:52 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Monday, October 26, 2015, Bruce Kellett
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> 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.
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.
I doubt that. "Crazy" things usually consist of mixed attributes from
real things. If I try I can think of "crazy" things in this sense, but
mostly in verbal terms. It's difficult to imagine even a dragon in
detail - and a dragon is just a large, flying, fire breathing lizard.
To imagine a whole environment of "crazy" things in the detail I
experience real things, or even in the detail of a realistic video game
is beyond my powers. Add the condition that the "crazy" things not just
be rearrange components of real things and I don't think anyone can do it.
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?
See above.
Brent
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