[ExI] Meaningless Symbols

Aware aware at awareresearch.com
Sat Jan 16 18:37:32 UTC 2010


This discussion shares much in common with PHIL101-type bantering
common in college dorms--less the wine, beer and marijuana.

If you want to gain some traction, might I suggest the following?
I've given it to others with useful effect and I think I've posted it
here before.  If the purpose of this discussion is to increase
understanding, rather than just to be right (John, are you listening?)
then you should at least be familiar with the thinking presented by
John Pollack in this paper.


"So you think you exist? In defense of nolipsism." Coauthored with
Jenann Ismael. In Knowlege and Reality:  Essays in Honor of Alvin
Plantinga (Kluwer), eds. Thomas Crisp, Matthew Davidson, David Vander
Laan. Springer Verlag, 2004. "Human beings think of themselves in
terms of a privileged non-descriptive designator — a mental "I". Such
thoughts are called "de se" thoughts. The mind/body problem is the
problem of deciding what kind of thing I am, and it can be regarded as
arising from the fact that we think of ourselves non-descriptively.
Why do we think of ourselves in this way? We investigate the
functional role of "I" (and also "here" and "now") in cognition,
arguing that the use of such non-descriptive "reflexive" designators
is essential for making sophisticated cognition work in a
general-purpose cognitive agent. If we were to build a robot capable
of similar cognitive tasks as humans, it would have to be equipped
with such designators. Once we understand the functional role of
reflexive designators in cognition, we will see that to make cognition
work properly, an agent must use a de se designator in specific ways
in its reasoning. Rather simple arguments based upon how "I" works in
reasoning lead to the conclusion that it cannot designate the body or
part of the body. If it designates anything, it must be something
non-physical. However, for the purpose of making the reasoning work
correctly, it makes no difference whether "I" actually designates
anything. If we were to build a robot that more or less duplicated
human cognition, we would not have to equip it with anything for "I"
to designate, and general physicalist inclinations suggest that there
would be nothing for “I” to designate in the robot. In particular, it
cannot designate the physical contraption. So the robot would believe
"I exist", but it would be wrong. Why should we think we are any
different?"

<http://oscarhome.soc-sci.arizona.edu/ftp/PAPERS/Nolipsism.pdf>

- Jef



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