[ExI] Meaningless Symbols.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2010/1/14 Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com>:
> --- On Wed, 1/13/10, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Searle's response is for the man to internalise the cards
>> and rules so that the room is eliminated. He then says that the man is
>> the whole system and still doesn't understand Chinese, therefore the
>> system doesn't understand Chinese.
>
> Right.
>
>> But that just means that Searle
>> does not understand the concept of a system.
>
> The point is that the man now IS the system. He becomes the room that some detractors insisted understood the symbols even if the man inside did not. He now has everything the room had, yet neither he nor anything inside him understands.

The man physically constitutes the whole system but that does not mean
that understanding at a higher level does not supervene on his low
level symbol processing. That is what neurons do: the individual
neurons are stupid, and they remain stupid despite the fact that
intelligence and consciousness supervenes on their individually stupid
behaviour.

Perhaps a variant of the CR where there are *two* men cooperating in
the symbol processing might drive home the point. Neither of the men
understands Chinese; do you now think it is now possible that the
system understands Chinese? What if the two men are telepathically
linked so that they form one mind: does the system suddenly lose its
understanding of Chinese that it had when they were separate?

The CRA is meant to demonstrate that syntax cannot produce semantics
without assuming it beforehand. The two man CR is even more closely
analogous to the brain, so if the argument is that the two man CR does
not have understanding, then it is also an argument that the brain of
a Chinese speaker lacks understanding.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou