[ExI] Understanding is useless (was: The digital nature of brains)

[John Clark]

On Jan 29, 2010, Gordon Swobe wrote:

>> I don't know it for a fact but presumably you are not a computer program
> 
> I'll take that as a compliment. 

As well you should.

> English symbols have meaning to me just as they do you.

Hey speak for yourself. I just input an ASCII sequence, process it syntactically, and then output a different ASCII sequence. The fact that I have no knowledge of the meaning of one bit of it I have never found the least bit inconvenient, as meaning never actually does anything so you can get along just fine without it. For example, the Turing Test is completely uninterested in meaning as is Evolution, and yet it managed to produce the human mind, so it's not much of a stretch to imagine somebody could write a good post without having any idea of what it means. 

Yes yes I know, I'm setting myself up perfectly for the retort "Haw, I always knew you didn't know what you were talking about", and it's true I don't have a clue what I'm talking about, but I don't consider that an insult. The fact that I'm lacking a fifth wheel called "understanding" has never been the slightest handicap to me, I can still produce a pretty good ASCII sequence. There is no concept more useless than meaning.

> natural selection engineered systems like you and me that can look not only at their forms but also at their meanings. 

How does natural selection do that as meaning has absolutely no effect on behavior? That is after all why you think the Turing Test can't detect consciousness.

> The adjective "syntactic" describes the form-based nature of the rules for manipulating symbols as found in computer software. The word does not apply to the symbols themselves. 

But in the Chinese Room you kept telling us that the shelf full of books that is too large to fit in the observable universe contains nothing but syntactic symbols without one bit of meaning in the entire lot, and now you're telling us that may not be true, it depends on who or what is reading those books. Perhaps thats why you included the words "in computer software" above, but then you are once again just stating what you're trying to prove in your thought experiment.

 John K Clark  



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