[ExI] Semiotics and Computability

Stathis Papaioannou stathisp at gmail.com
Fri Feb 5 13:25:24 UTC 2010


On 6 February 2010 00:05, Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- On Fri, 2/5/10, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> By definition it isn't measurable, since (according to
>> Searle and Gordon) it would be possible to perfectly reproduce the
>> behaviour of the brain, but leave out understanding.
>
> Does your watch understand what time it is, Stathis? No, of course not. But yet it tells you the correct time anyway, *as if* it had understanding. Amazing!

The watch obviously does not behave exactly like a human, so there is
no reason why it should understand time in the same way as a human
does. The point is that is impossible to make a brain or brain
component that behaves *exactly* like the natural equivalent but lacks
understanding. Note that this says nothing about programs or
computers: it is impossible through *any means whatsoever* to make
such a device, even even if you could invoke magic.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou



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