[ExI] Wernicke's aphasia and the CRA.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/12/13 Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com>:
>> You still refuse to acknowledge what
>> critics have shown for many years: the English monoglot
>> speaker is the functional equivalent of a single neuron
>
> Perhps you missed it Damien it but that reply of the systems critics was answered many years ago.
>
> In the reply, the man internalizes the rule book and steps outside the room. Different picture, same symbol grounding problem.

Would your consciousness disappear if it were shown that neurons in
the brain had their own separate intelligence allowing them to do
their mundane jobs but without an understanding of the broader
picture?

> The larger point of course is that really does not matter which metaphor we use. The CR thought experiment illustrates the symbol grounding problem:
>
> "The Symbol Grounding Problem is related to the problem of how words (symbols) get their meanings, and hence to the problem of what meaning itself really is. The problem of meaning is in turn related to the problem of consciousness, or how it is that mental states are meaningful. According to a widely held theory of cognition, "computationalism," cognition (i.e., thinking) is just a form of computation. But computation in turn is just formal symbol manipulation: symbols are manipulated according to rules that are based on the symbols' shapes, not their meanings."
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_grounding

How is it that the symbol grounding problem is not a problem for
brains? All brains do as far as an external observer is concerned is
harness chemical reactions in order to manipulate symbols, just as
computers harness electric current in order to manipulate symbols. If
semantics magically appears out of chemical reactions why should it
not also magically appear out of electric currents?


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou