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You Are Simply Not Logical!

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Posted by Richard D. Stafford, Ph.D. on December 14, 2001 14:48:39 UTC

Harv,

All of your arguments are entirely based on the religious conviction that your feelings about what is going on are correct: that your mental model of the phenomena is valid. Nothing you say is backed by any kind of logically derived arguments.

You apparently completely missed the essence of my comment in "Just Who Is Aware Here?". You gave an argument as to why computers can't really think, "The Chinese Room Thought Experiment", without comprehending that the argument works just as well against the idea that you are aware as it does against the idea that computers are aware.

Your words, "It's not actually thinking. Its internal states and processes, being purely syntactic, lack semantics (meaning); so, it doesn't really have intentional (i.e., meaningful) mental states." Now prove to me you have any intentional (i.e., meaningful) mental states!

>>>Does Deep Blue realize **[Now just what does "realize" mean? Could you possibly be talking about a piece of knowledge recorded somewhere? A computer can do that!] that it has lost a game of chess, or does it merely execute a section of code [or do you just execute a piece of biological code]** that acts to the user as if it understands **[now what does "understand" mean? That pointers to aspects related to the phenomena are also part of the information held by the system? If that is understanding then the computer can certainly "understand"!]** a loss? For example, if I were coding Deep Blue I might have a table of responses such as "I lost. Another game?".

Getting back to the thought experiment, anytime a Chinese card is presented to a computer program, the computer program looks at a table full of Chinese characters and does a search. Upon finding a match of the appropriate character (no major differences), the computer program finds the associated table entry which translates the Chinese word to English. The program 'mechanically' copies the storage contents of the translation to your monitor screen memory which is then electronically displayed on your monitor.

There is at no point in the algorithm a realization process where the whole program understands the meaning **[Here you appear to be defining "realization" in terms of two terms of doubtful clarity! You need to tell us exactly what you mean by "realization" before anyone can check the logical accuracy of your purported fact! I commented on "understanding" above and "meaning" definitely needs clarification]** of the Chinese character. The program is merely acting mechanically (coping data, searching for a match of memory contents, executing a command to retrieve from certain memory contents, etc). **[ And you can prove you are not?]**

Your position is entirely religious in nature and you do not even realize it!

Have fun -- Dick

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