[ExI] The digital nature of brains (was: digital simulations)

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2010/1/31 Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com>:
> --- On Fri, 1/29/10, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> Is the following sentence true? Or is it false?
>>>
>>> DWAP has conscious understanding of the meanings of
>>> English words.
>>
>> It's false.
>
> Good, glad you think so.
>
>> What you describe by itself won't allow DWAP to use words in a
>> meaningful way.
>
> Let's add a subroutine to the program to allow DWAP to use words in a meaningful way. The human types in a sentence of this form "Say, DWAP, what does x mean?" where x equals any English word. Accessing its vast database of word associations, DWAP responds in the form "x means..." and tells the operator the definition of x and the definition of every word in x's definition and the definitions of all the words in all those definitions, and so on. Surely that counts as a meaningful use of words. Does DWAP have conscious understanding of words now?

It still doesn't count as meaningful use of words, it's just a
dictionary. Meaningful use of words would involve DWAP participating
in a discussion as we are now having.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou