[ExI] Religious idiocy (was: digital nature of brains)

[Eric Messick]

Gordon writes:
>--- On Fri, 1/29/10, Eric Messick <eric at m056832107.syzygy.com> wrote:
>> You're conflating symbols and words.
>
>Words are symbols, Eric. Not all symbols are words but all words are symbols.

Yes, what we are talking about here are symbols which are not words.

>> Meaning is attached to word symbols when the word symbols
>> are associated with sense symbols, not with other word
>> symbols.
>
>In this thread I was addressing the claim that the symbol grounding
> problem is solved when computers associate symbols.

Yes, you showed that associating a bunch of word symbols with each
other doesn't result in meaning.  You attacked a straw man.  No claim
was ever made that associating words with words would create meaning.
The claim is that sense symbols must be involved.  Now stop whacking at
that straw man.

Perhaps we should play a game of "spot the fallacy".

Here we have "attacking a straw man".

You do a very good job with "begging the question", by assuming that
syntax can't produce semantics and deriving that computers can't
understand.

You slip in the "masked man fallacy" with "I know I understand things,
I don't know how computers could understand things, so computers can't
understand things the way I do."

You confuse levels of abstraction by pointing out that computers
running weather simulations don't get wet.

You try to engage intuition about things of vastly different scales
when you try to equate the inability of one thing to accomplish a
particular task with a supposed inability for 100 billion interacting
things to accomplish the task.

You also repeat these fallacies after others have pointed them out to
you.  I've been trying to figure out what is driving you to do this,
but you don't seem willing to back up and look at the whole thing from
a higher level.  Considering your demonstrated inability to handle
levels of abstraction, perhaps you are unable to "go meta" on this.
Does this problem afflict you in other areas?

-eric