[ExI] Meaningless Symbols.

John Clark jonkc at bellsouth.net
Sat Jan 16 17:06:52 UTC 2010


On Jan 15, 2010, Damien Broderick wrote:

> I just poured 3 cups of water into a 2 cup jar. Does the fact that it stopped accepting water after I'd put in 2 cups and overflowed the rest mean it *understands* 3>2?

Yes.

> Then I put a 1 foot rule next to a book and the 9 matched up with the top of the book. Did the rule *understand* how tall the book is?

Yes.

> Computer programs understand nothing more than that.

So what? That's enough understanding to work with; embarrassingly too much actually. Gordon thinks that genuine understanding is a completely useless property for intelligent people or machines to have because they would continue to act in exactly the same way whether they have understanding or not.
Apparently you believe the same thing; nevertheless for reasons never explained Evolution invented understanding long ago and even more bizarrely saw fit to retain it over hundreds of millions of years. Or at least that's what Gordon claims to have happened because on at least some occasions he says he understands things, you may have made similar assertions in the past. 

> This all reminds me of the behaviorist idiocy of the 1950s.

Given the above you may not be in the strongest position to call anything idiocy.

 John K Clark

 
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