[ExI] Meaningless Symbols

[Gordon Swobe]

--- On Tue, 1/12/10, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
 
> At the end of the next day you need to show how the mind solves the 
> symbol grounding problem. 

We'll know the complete answer someday. For now we need only know and agree that the mind has this cognitive capacity to understand, say, Chinese symbols. Now we ask whether implementing a formal program can give the mind that capacity to ground symbols. If it can then we should be able to do an experiment in which a mind obtains that cognitive capacity from mentally running a program. But as it turns out, we do not obtain that capacity from mentally running such a program. So whatever the mind does to get that cognitive capacity, it doesn't obtain it from running a formal program. 

Now we know more about the mind than we did before, even if we don't yet know the complete answer.

-gts