Can computers understand?Can understanding be simulated by computers?

[moving finger]

IF consciousness is necessary for understanding THEN it follows that an agent which does not possesses consciousness also does not possesses understanding.
I hope that everyone here agrees with this statement?
The question that remains to be answered is then : Is consciousness necessary for understanding?

It all depends on how you define “understanding” and “consciousness.” If we use my definitions of those terms, then the answer is yes.

And if one uses another definition of these terms then the answer could be no.
This (with respect) tells us nothing useful, execpt that the answer to the question depends on one’s definition of understanding. Period.

Whether or not understanding requires consiousness is going to depend on how we define the terms anyway, so I don’t think this is a valid criticism.

What criticism is that? The point I am trying to make is that “the conclusion depends on the definition”. Tisthammerw can use his definition and conclude that understanding is impossible in a non-conscious agent, MF can use his definition and conclude understanding is possible in a non-conscious agent. Each conclusion is equally valid. This gets us nowhere.

After all, if we use your logic here, we have not shown that all bachelors are unmarried even though that is an analytic statement.

First define your terms, then construct your argument. Then ask yourself whether or not it is a fallacious argument.

Given the definitions I’ve used, the phrase “understanding requires consciousness” is an analytic statement, and analytic statements are not fallacious.

With respect, I did not say the statement “understanding requires consciousness” is fallacious.
The statement “understanding requires consciousness” is also a premise in your argument.
I said the ARGUMENT is fallacious. Do you understand the difference between an argument and a statement and a premise?

Yes, but I also understand that you have phrased my analytic statement in the form of an argument. This can be done to justify the analytic statement.

I can make the statement “the moon is made of cheese”. Is that statement true or false? How would we know? The only way to show whether it is true or false is to construct an argument to show how I arrive at the statement “the moon is made of cheese”. If my argument is “the moon is made of cheese because I define cheese as the main ingredient of moons” then the argument is circular, and fallacious.
Can you construct a non-fallacious (ie non-circular) argument to show whether your statement “understanding requires consciousness” is true or false?

in the context of my analytic statement “understanding requires consciousness” here is the “argument” I am using:
The first premise is the definition of understanding I'll be using (in terms of a man understanding words):
* The man actually knows what the words mean, i.e. that he perceives the meaning of the words, or to put it another way, that he is aware of the truth of what the words mean.
So in this definition, understanding is to be aware of the true meaning of what is communicated. For instance, a man understanding a Chinese word denotes that he is factually aware of what the word means.
The second premise is the definition of consciousness I’ll be using:
* Consciousness is the state of being characterized by sensation, perception, thought, awareness, etc. By the definition in question, if an entity has any of these characteristics the entity possesses consciousness.
My conclusion: understanding requires consciousness.

The conclusion is contained in the premises, hence circular, hence the argument is fallacious.

Note that the premises are true: these are the definitions that I am using; this is what I mean when I use the terms.

Tisthammerw “asserts” that the premises are true – MF disputes that the premises are true.
Regardless of whether the premises are true or not, the argument as it stands is still circular, hence still fallacious.
The argument “all bachelors are unmarried because a bachelor is defined as an unmarried man” does not necessarily contain false premises, but the argument is still circular, hence fallacious.
One CANNOT prove anything useful with a circular argument, because the conclusion is already contained in the premises. This is the whole reason why circular arguments are fallacious.

You may mean something different when you use the terms, but that doesn’t change the veracity of my premises. The argument here is quite sound.

The argument is fallacious because it is circular, by definition.
The veracity of your premises is a matter of opinion. My opinion is different to yours.

To construct an argument we first need to state our premises, then we draw inferences from those premises, then we make a conclusion from the inferences and premises.
Let's do this.
First one must define what one means by the terms “bachelor”, and “unmarried”. (you may object "this is obvious", but that is beside the point. Strictly all terms in an argument must be clearly defined and agreed).
These definitions then become part of the premises to the argument.
If the conclusion of the argument is already contained in the premises, then by definition the argument is fallacious, by “circulus in demonstrando”.
For example :
"we take as a premise that "bachelor" is defined as an "unmarried male", it follows that the statement "all bachelors are unmarried" is true"
The above argument is completely logical, but fallacious due to “circulus in demonstrando”

You have a rather strange and confusing way of looking at analytic statements by phrasing them in the form of an argument and calling them “fallacious.”

To draw a conclusion from premises, one must make an argument. If you think it is “strange” to construct an argument in logic in order to draw conclusions then I must ask where did you learn your logic? How else would you draw a conclusion?
The statement “understanding requires consciousness” is just that – a statement. Tisthammerw asserts this statement is true. MF asserts that it is not necessarily true. How can we know who is right?

I am familiar with circular reasoning, but this objection doesn’t quite apply to analytic statements, and I don’t understand your insistence of phrasing my analytic statement “understanding requires consciousness” in the form of an argument when (a) you yourself admit that the analytic statement is true

Where have I admitted that the stand-alone statement “understanding requires consciousness” is true?

(b) the argument is perfectly sound anyway

The argument is circular, hence by definition fallacious. Have you really studied circular arguments? They are generally accepted in logic as being fallacious. Perhaps you follow different rules of logic to the rest of us?

(c) this analytical statement is itself a premise to larger and more relevant argument that you seem to be avoiding: the one regarding the Chinese room thought experiment.

I have lost count of the number of times that I have said “I disagree with your premise”. I am tired of repeating it.

Let’s take my example above regarding the “understanding requires consciousness” argument above. The conclusion logically follows from the premises, and the premises are true.

There you go again. What did I just say? What part of “I disagree with your premise” is unclear?

The argument is sound. Doesn’t it seem odd then to call the argument “fallacious”?

A circular argument is fallacious, by definition. You have agreed that your argument is circular.

Do we all (MF, Tournesol and Tisthammerw) agree that the following statement is true?
“whether or not consciousness is necessary for understanding is a matter of definition”
True or false?

If am understanding you correctly, then the answer is true: whether or not consciousness is necessary for understanding depends on how you define “consciousness” and “understanding.”

Thank you. We do agree on this. That is a step forward.

here is my quick shot at defining the verb "To Understand" :
To Understand (definition)
To know (= to possesses knowledge) and to comprehend the nature or meaning of something;
To perceive (an idea or situation) in terms of mental or informational representations/models;
To make sense of something (eg of a language);
To believe to be the case (as in "I understand it is getting late")

There’s a problem here. If your definition of understanding does not require consciousness, it seems we are both using the word “perceive” quite differently, since if an entity perceives the entity possesses consciousness (using my definition of the word “consciousness”).
How about your definition of the word “perceive”.
BTW, I use “perceive” definition 1a and 2 in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. It seems you are not using the conventional definition of the word “perceive” if you are trying to define understanding in such a way that it does not require consciousness. So what do you mean when you use the term “perceive”?

Is that the online version of the dictionary you refer to? With respect there are many more definitions of “to perceive” than contained in this disctionary. If one consults much larger and more comprehensive dictionaries one will find a number of alternative definitions of the verb.

In the Webster dictionary to perceive is defined in a number of ways, one of them being :
To obtain knowledge of through the senses; to receive impressions from by means of the bodily organs; to take cognizance of the existence, character, or identity of, by means of the senses; to see, hear, or feel;

In another dictionary (The New Penguin English Dictionary 2000) I find the following :
To perceive : To become aware of something through the senses, esp to see or observe; to regard somebody or something as something specified (eg she is perceived as being intelligent).

In yet another (The Collins Dictionary) I find :
To perceive : To become aware of (something) through the senses, to recognise or observe
Perception : The process by which an organism detects and interprets information from the external world by means of sensing receptors

There are thus very clear and accepted meanings of “to perceive” and "perception" which do not imply conscious perception.

The word perceive actually derives from the latine “per cipere” which means “to seize” or “to take”. Again, there is no requirement for consciousness contained in the roots of the word.

In psychology and the cognitive sciences, the word perception (= the act of perceiving) is defined as “the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organising (sensory) information”. It follows from this that “to perceive” is to acquire, interpret, select, and organise (sensory) information.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Actually, having cogitated on this issue for a little longer, I do not see that "perception" (ie the processing of data received from external sense-receptors) is a necessary part of understanding per se. I can imagine a completely self-contained agent which "understands Chinese", but has no sense-receptors at all - hence it couild not "perceive", and yet could still claim to understand Chinese. Therefore on reflection I now delete the requirement "to perceive" from my list of "necessary items" for understanding.

(on the other hand, there are other possible meanings to "perceive", for example "to perceive the truth of something, such as a statement" - an agent which understands is able to "perceive the truth of" things, therefore it necessarily perceives in this sense of the word)

With respect, we can argue about this until the cows come home. In the end, Tournesol is right (I don’t find myself agreeing with him often, so this is wonderful) – there is no “right” or “wrong” definition of a word in language, there are only more or less accepted definitions. And there are perfectly acceptable definitions of “to perceive” which do not associate perception with consciousness.

with respect

MF

 

[moving finger]

I don't mean to butt in.. but i am going to...(throws ass in) this is all turning into a clever game of "a play on words". I think you guys should try and work together a little bit better instead of always trying to prove one another wrong on seemingly aggressive stances. Might get somewhere. Just my 2 cents, take it or leave it.

dgoodpasture2005 is right.

What we have is the following :
Tisthammerw defines understanding such that consciousness is necessary for understanding
Quantumcarl defines understanding such that "being human" is necessary for understanding
MF defines understanding such that neither consciousness nor "being human" is necessary for understanding
We could call these TH-understanding, QC-understanding and MF-understanding respectively.
Only conscious agents can have TH-understanding.
Only human agents can have QC-understanding.
and the China Room may have MF-understanding.

May your God go with you

MF

 

[moving finger]

Hopefully I can clarify a few things here...

OK, let’s try to understand each other.

Since we are talking about Searle's CR I would suggest using his definitions.
According to the CR argument symbol manipulation is a purely "syntactic" process (regarding only patterns of information) and that this can not yield a "semantic understanding" (semantic: regarding the meaning of the symbols which is not emergent from the "syntax"[pattern] of the symbols).

With respect, the above is not a “definition”, this is a conclusion (that symbol manipulation cannot give rise to semantic understanding).
If you are saying that the CR cannot have semantic understanding *by definition” then the entire CR argument becomes fallacious (circulus in demonstrando).

I realize that I was referring to Searle's conclusions but I was referring to them along with his definitions(which I have underlined in the above quote this time around). Also I do not fully agree with his definitions and conclusions as I pointed out here...

OK. Unfortunately I do not agree that the process of symbol manipulation (associated with the required information and knowledge) is necessarily a purely syntactic process, hence I disagree with his definition. Semantics is also all about symbol manipulation (just a different level or order of symbol manipulation to the syntactic level).

The problem that I see with his reasoning as I've stated on the other two threads regarding the CR is that Searle never really defines this "semantic" property. I think you would likely agree with me that this "semantic" understanding arises from complex orders of "syntactic" information (at least in humans if nothing else). I'd have to say that including this adendum I agree with his definitions though obviously not his conclusions (that syntactic information can not yield semantic understanding).

OK, we seem to agree on the conclusion, but possibly for slightly different reasons.
The problem I have is understanding the following : If you agree with his definition “symbol manipulation is PURELY syntactic”, how can you then conclude that symbol manipulation gives rise to semantic understanding?

I was saying that the eyes are only necessary for receiving the information and not for understanding and that once the information has been received that the eyes are no longer necessary. Or more exactly that the aquisition of information is necessary to understanding

We seem to agree on most of this. However I would not say that the “acquisition of” information is necessary to understanding, rather I would say that the “possession of” information is necessary to understanding. .
There are still areas where we seem to misunderstand each other, for example :

The purpose of the CR is not to "understand chinese" it's to mimic the understanding of chinese.

Understanding is a process. In terms of what the process achieves, there is no difference between “a process” and “a perfect simulation of that process”. If you think there is, Please explain why a perfect simulation of a process necessarily differs in any way from the original process?

May I ask some questions, to improve our understanding?
Do you believe the CR understands the meanings of the words it is using?
Do you believe that the words mean to the CR what they mean to people who speak/read chinese?
Do you believe the CR can hold a coherent and intelligent conversation in Chinese?

First off I am not arguing my own position here I am arguing that of Searle.

Whichever position you argue, your argument must be consistent and rigorous. Perhaps (with respect) some of the confusion between us arises because you on the one hand “argue the position of Searle” but at the same time when I disagree with ths argument your response is often to refer me to “your own definitions” of terms rather than Searle’s? Am I debating with TheStatutoryApe here, or with Searle’s stand-in?

His CR is built specifically to fail at understanding hence it does not understand.

I agree – but would phrase it slightly differently. He chooses his definitions associated with understanding such that understanding requires conscious awareness – which ensures that any agent that is not consciously aware fails to understand. By definition.

While Searle and Tisthammerw here would disagree that it can be altered in such a way as to possesses understanding I do not disagree with this.

Altered in what way?

The only thing which I am discussing here is Searle's original unaltered Chinese Room.
Searle's original unaltered Chinese Room is built in such a way that it is solely reactionary and only spits out preformulated responses to predetermined questions. Searle creates a hypothetical manuel which supposedly can contain enough preformulated responses and predetermined questions that the responses you get from it are indestinguishable from the responses you would get from a human.
The problem here is that this is patently impossible. The number of possible questions and answers is astronomical. The possible number would greatly exceed the possible number of positions on a chess board and the mapping of a full chess game tree itself would take thousands of years. This is not even taking into account the time it would take to program which responses are the best responses to which questions and how long it would take a computer to search such a database for each question and it's proper response.

The CR is supposed to be a thought-experiment, to argue matters of principle. Whether it is practical or even possible to build such a room “in reality” or not is beside the point.

So in reality we would have to conclude that if a computer can speak indestinguishably from a human then it must be capable of "understanding" but this does not mean that Searle's CR actually possesses understanding. Searle's CR is simply a hypothetical model that could not actually be achieved in reality.

My above remark again applies here.
With respect
MF

 

[moving finger]

Statement : "It is the case that a human being EITHER has complete understanding of the subject X, OR has no understanding of the subject X - there are NO "shades of grey" whereby a human being might have a partial understanding of the subject X."

(subject X could be the French language, for example)

Would quantumcarl agree that the above statement (according to quantumcarl's defininition of understanding) is true, or false?

That's how I see it... as in... true.

OK.

Now let us try a thought-experiment, which leads to another question.

Let us accept QC’s definition of understanding, ie that a human being EITHER has complete understanding of the subject X, OR has no understanding of the subject X - there are NO "shades of grey".

Suppose Mary comes along and claims that she understands the French language. (Mary is human by the way). Would you agree that it is possible that the statement “Mary understands the French language” could be a true statement?

(I assume you will answer “yes” to the above).

Thus, from QC’s definition of understanding, we have :

Mary EITHER has understanding of the French language, OR has no understanding of the the French language - there are NO "shades of grey"

In other words, the statement “Mary has understanding of the French language” is either true or false.

Now my question – how would QC propose to test whether the statement “Mary has understanding of the French language” is true or false?

With respect

MF

 

[quantumcarl]

Tentative Conclusion

Here is my tentative conclusion to our review of Searle's Chinese Room Thought experiment.

Searle has used incorrect terminology to describe the central function of the Chinese Room.

Therefore, Searle's thought experiiment is invalid.

I will concede, however, that the Chinese Room is capable of translation. In fact, I believe that is the word their looking for when referring to "understanding" chinese... in the case of Searle's Chinese Room.

In order to translate a language or art form or caligraphy... etc... one does not, nessesarily, have to understand what one is translating.

Take, for instance, the translation of code during war time. A translator will tranlate the code into another code which is passed on to a higher authority who has an understanding of the translated but secondarily encoded code.



The word "understand" has been bastardized in recent times and does not belong nor is it necessary to be used as a description of comprehending a language or math or logisitics etc...

§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?§?

To understand means to literally stand under a topic... as into stand in its shoes (an empathic metaphor) and become a part of its origins, functions, malfunctions an so on. One uses consciousness, empathy, previous and present experiences and knowledge of other's experiences to attain understanding. Until a person has discovered the whole story and all those stories that have made the story whole, they will not understand the story. And, even then, they will only understand the story according to their relative point of view.

Once more, my initial attempt at a conclusion for this thread...

Searle's CR thought experiment - its conclusion and its critics - errored when they utilized a term ("understanding") that, contextually, did not belong as part of the experiment. The term "translation" or "translating" would have been sufficient.

Do you think the CR can translate Chinese?

(Try "Babblefish" at "Altavista" for further research.)

 

[moving finger]

In order to translate a language or art form or caligraphy... etc... one does not, nessesarily, have to understand what one is translating.

This is an interesting statement from you, QC.
I agree that understanding is not a prerequisite for translation, but I would suggest that to perform an accurate translation of one complex language into another it helps to understand both languages.
In the same way, I argue that empathy is not a prerequisite for understanding, but in order to properly and fully understand a language it helps to have empathy with the people using that language.

Take, for instance, the translation of code during war time. A translator will tranlate the code into another code which is passed on to a higher authority who has an understanding of the translated but secondarily encoded code.

imho this is exactly what the purpose of each neuron or group of neurons in the brain - to accept incoming information (which it does not understand), to process it, then to pass information onto other neurons and groups of neurons. There is no microscopic part of the brain which "understands" what it is doing, just as none of the individual translators in your example "understands" what it is doing. Each component is simply following deterministic rules to generate output from input.

One uses consciousness, empathy, previous and present experiences and knowledge of other's experiences to attain understanding. Until a person has discovered the whole story and all those stories that have made the story whole, they will not understand the story. And, even then, they will only understand the story according to their relative point of view.

imho consciousness and empathy are associated with understanding in humans, but it does not follow from this association that either consciousness or empathy are necessary to achieve understanding in all agents.

Once more, my initial attempt at a conclusion for this thread...
Searle's CR thought experiment - its conclusion and its critics - errored when they utilized a term ("understanding") that, contextually, did not belong as part of the experiment. The term "translation" or "translating" would have been sufficient.

imho I disagree. When QC asks MF a question, and MF replies, one could argue that “all that happens is a process of translation – in the agent MF - from the question to the answer”, but though strictly correct, this would be too simplistic.
If one wishes to say that the CR is an example of no more than a translating machine, then I would assert that humans are also no more than a translating machine.

Do you think the CR can translate Chinese?

"translate Chinese" into what?
By definition the CR understands only Chinese. It does not understand any other language.
MF

 

[quantumcarl]

This is an interesting statement from you, QC.
I agree that understanding is not a prerequisite for translation, but I would suggest that to perform an accurate translation of one complex language into another it helps to understand both languages.

A person who uses Mongolian as a language can translate French into English using translation texts without ever possessing an understanding of either French or English and the origins of those two languages.

In the same way, I argue that empathy is not a prerequisite for understanding, but in order to properly and fully understand a language it helps to have empathy with the people using that language.

What is the basis of your "argument"?

imho
this is exactly what the purpose of each neuron or group of neurons in the brain - to accept incoming information (which it does not understand), to process it, then to pass information onto other neurons and groups of neurons. There is no microscopic part of the brain which "understands" what it is doing, just as none of the individual translators in your example "understands" what it is doing. Each component is simply following deterministic rules to generate output from input.

In my opinion you are not a neuroscientist and have little or no knowledge or experience to back up this statement. I could be wrong but, even neuroscientists are unsure of how or why neurons behave in certain ways and are able to preform certain functions in addition to preforming functions that were previously preformed by other, specified neurons.

imho consciousness and empathy are associated with understanding in humans, but it does not follow from this association that either consciousness or empathy are necessary to achieve understanding in all agents.

If you are saying that understanding is not guilty by the association of relying on empathy and consciousness to be defined, in my opinion, you are wrong.

If one wishes to say that the CR is an example of no more than a translating machine, then I would assert that humans are also no more than a translating machine.

And that would be your opinion and your way of dealing with my statement. What I would add to your statement is that humans are organic translators with empathy and consciousness. And this is what distinquishes our method of translation from a machine's. We call it "understanding".

"translate Chinese" into what?
By definition the CR understands only Chinese. It does not understand any other language.MF

Thanks for reminding me.

The experiment is in error because the CR has a human (aka: conscious being) in the room... and it is also for that reason that I declare the Chinese Room Thought Experiment in error and defunct.

If the whole purpose of the experiment is to determine the difference between how a machine processes information and how a human process information... the experiment is lacking control by using a human in the CR.

 

[Tournesol]

It is a test based on an explanation; I am saying we have to solve the hard problem first, before we can have a genuine test.

In other words, in absence of an explanation, it makes no sense to test for consciousness? There is thus no logical basis for Searle’s conclusion that the CR does not possesses consciousness, correct?

In the absence of an objective explanation there is no objective way of
testing for consciousness. Of course there is still a subjective way; if
you are conscious, the very fact that you are conscious tells you you are
conscious. Hence Searle puts himself inside the room.

If manipulating symbols is all there is to understanding, and if consciousness is part of understanding, then there should be a conscious awareness of Chinese in the room (or in Searle's head, in the internalised case).

That is a big “if”. For Searle’s objection to carry any weight, it first needs to be shown that consciousness is necessary for understanding. This has not been done (except by “circulus in demonstrando”, which results in a fallacious argument)
[/QUOTE]
That consciousness is part of understanding is established by the definitions
of the words and the way language is used. Using words correctly is not
fallaciously circular argumentation: "if there is a bachelor in the room, there is a man in the room" is a a perfectly valid argument. So is
"if there is a unicorn in the room, there is a horned animal in the
room". The conceptual, definitional, logical correctness of an
argument (validity) is a separate issue to its factual, empirical correctness (soundness).
If the conclusion to an arguemnt were not in some way contained in its
premisses, there would be no such things as logical arguements in the first
place.
The problem with circular arguemnts is not that the premiss contains the
conclusion, the problem is that it does so without being either analytically true
(e.g by defintion) or synthetically true (factually, empirically).

You could claim that consciousness is not necessarly part of machine understanding; but that would be an admission that the CR's understanding is half-baked compared to human understanding...unless you claim that huamn understanding has nothing to do with consciousness either.

I am claiming that consciousness is not necessary for understanding in all possible agents. Consciousness may be necessary for understanding in humans, but it does not follow from this that this is the case in all possible agents.
To conclude from this that “understanding without consciousness is half baked” is an unsubstantiated anthropocentric (one might even say prejudiced?) opinion.

As I have stated several times, the intelligence of an artificial intelligence
needs to be pinned to human intelligence (albeit not it in a way that makes it
trivially impossible) in order to make the claim of "artificiallity"
intelligible. Otherwise, the computer is just doing something -- something
that might as well be called infromation-processing,or symbol manipulation.
No-one can doubt that computers can do those things, and Searle doesn't
either. Detaching the intelligence of the CR from human intelligence does
nothing to counteract the argument of the CR; in fact it is suicidal to the
strong AI case.

But consciousness is a defintional quality of understanding, just as being umarried is being a defintional quality of being a bachelor.

To argue “consciousness is necessary for understanding because understanding is defined such that consciousness is a necessary part of understanding” is a simple example of “circulus in demonstrando”, which results in a fallacious argument.

Is "bachelors are unmarried because bachelors are unmarried" viciously
circular too ? Or is it -- as every logician everywhere maintains -- a
necessary, analytical truth ?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tournesol
If you understand something , you can report that you know it, explain how you know it. etc. That higher-level knowing-how-you-know is consciousness by definition.

I dispute that an agent needs to in detail “know how it knows” in order for it to possesses an “understanding of subject X”.
“To know” is “to possesses knowledge”. A computer can report that it “knows” X (in the sense that the knowledge X is contained in it’s memory and processes), it might (if it is sufficiently complex) also be able to explain how it came about that it possesses that knowledge. By your definition such a computer would then be conscious?

Maybe. The question is whether syntax is sufficient for semantics.

I think not. imho what you suggest may be necessary, but is not sufficient, for consciousness.
Allow me to speculate.
Consciousness also requires a certain level of internalised self-representation, such that the conscious entity internally manipulates (processes) symbols for “itself” which it can relate to other symbols for objects and processes in the “perceived outside world”; in doing this it creates an internalised representation of itself in juxtaposition to the perceived outside world, resulting in a self-sustaining internal model. This model can have an unlimited number of possible levels of self-reference, such that it is possible that “it knows that it knows”, “it knows that it knows that it knows” etc.

Not very relevant.
If it is necessary but insufficient criterion for consciousness, and the CR doesn't have it, the
CR doesn't have consciousness.

I see. We first define understanding such that consciousness is necessary to understanding. And from our definition of understanding, we then conclude that understanding requires consciousness. Is that how its done?

How else would you do it ? Test for understanding without knowing what
"understanding means". Beg the question in the other direction by
re-defining "understanding" to not require consciousness ?

Write down a definition of "red" that a blind person would understand.

Are you suggesting that a blind person would not be able to understand a definition of “red”?

No, I am suggesting that no-one can write a definition that conveys the
sensory, experiential quality. (Inasmuch as you can write down a theoretical,
non-experiential defintion. a blnd person would be able to understand it).
Thus the argument that all words can be defined
in entirely symbolic terms fails, thus the assumption that symbol-manipulation
is sufficient for semantics fails.

Sense-experience (the ability to experience the sensation of red) is a particular kind of knowledge, and is not synonymous with “understanding the concept of red”. Compare with the infamous “What Mary “Didn’t Know”” thought experiment.

Well, quite. It is a particular kind of knowledge, and somehow who lacks that
particular kind of knowledge lacks full semantics. You seem to be saying that
non-experiential knowledge ("red light has a wavelentght of 500nm") *is*
understanding, and all there is to understanding, and experience is
something extraneous that does not belong to understanding at all
(in contradiction to the conclusion of "What Mary Knew").
Of course, that would be circular and question-begging.

It is perfectly reasonable to suggest that anyone needs normal vision in order to fully understand colour terms in any language.

I disagree. I do not need to have the power of flight to understand aerodynamics.

To theoretically understand it.

Vision is simply an access to experiential information, a person who “sees red” does not necessarily understand anything about “red” apart from the experiential aspect (which imho is not “understanding”).

How remarkably convenient. Tell me, is that true analytically, by defintion,
or is it an observed fact ?

Experiential information may be used as an aid to understanding in some agents, but I dispute that experiential information is necessary for understanding in all agents.

How can it fail to be necessary for a semantic understanding of words that refer
sepcifically to experiences ?

Would you deny a blind person’s ability to understand Chinese?
Or a deaf person’s?

They don't fully lack it, they don't fully have it. But remember that a computer is much more restricted.

More restricted in what sense?

It doesn't have any human-style senses at all. Like Wittgenstien's lion, but
more so.

The latter is critical to the ordinary, linguistic understanding of "red".

I dispute that an agent which simply “experiences the sight of red” necessarily underdstands anything about the colour red.

Well, that is just wrong; they understand just what Mary doesn't: what it
looks like. It may well be the case that they don't know any of the stuff that
Mary does know. However, I do not need to argue that non-experiential
knowledge is not knowledge.

I also dispute that “experiencing the sight of red” is necessary to achieve an understanding of red (just as I do not need to be able to fly in order to understand aerodynamics).

You don't need to fly in order to understand aerodynamics *theoretically*.
However, if you can do both you clearly have more understanding than someone
who can only do one or the other or neither.
(Would you want to fly in a plane piloted by someone who had never been in the
air before ?)

If the "information processing" sense falls short of full human understanding, and I maintain it does, the arguemnt for strong AI founders and Searle makes his case.

And I mainitain it does not. I can converse intelligently with a blind person about the colour “red”, and that person can understand everything there is to know about red, without ever “experiencing the sight of red”.

No they can't. They don't know what Mary doesn't know.
If what you say is true, it would be impossible for anyone to ever learn form,
or be surprised by, an experience. Having been informed that caviare is
sturgeon eggs, they would not be surprised by the taste of caviare.
But "Sturgeon eggs" conveys almost nothing about the taste of caviare.

Your argument seems to be that “being able to see red” is necessary for an understanding of red, which is like saying “being able to fly” is necessary for an understanding of flight.

It is necessary for full understanding.

If you place me in a state of sensory-deprivation does it follow that I will lose all understanding? No.

They are necessary to learn the meaning of sensory language ITFP.
They are aids to understanding in the context of some agents (eg human beings), because that is exactly how human beings acquire some of their information. It is not obvious to me that “the only possible way that any agent can learn is via sense-experience”, is it to you?

I didn't claim sensory experience was the only way to learn, simpliciter.
I claim that experience is necessary for a *full* understanding of *sensory*
language, and that an entity without sensory exprience therefore lacks full
semantics.
If you are going to counter this claim as stated, you need to rise to the
challenge and show how a *verbal* definition of "red" can convey the *experiential*
meaning of "red". (ie show that if Mary had access to the right books -- the
ones containing this magic definition -- she would have had nothing left to learn).

 

[Tisthammerw]

It all depends on how you define “understanding” and “consciousness.” If we use my definitions of those terms, then the answer is yes.

And if one uses another definition of these terms then the answer could be no.

Well, yes. I have said many times that the answer to the question depends on the definition of “understanding” and “consciousness” used.

Whether or not understanding requires consiousness is going to depend on how we define the terms anyway, so I don’t think this is a valid criticism.

What criticism is that?

Criticisms like “circulus in demonstrando” and that the argument is “fallacious.”

After all, if we use your logic here, we have not shown that all bachelors are unmarried even though that is an analytic statement.

First define your terms, then construct your argument. Then ask yourself whether or not it is a fallacious argument.

Very well. I define a bachelor to be “a male who is not married.” I define unmarried to be “not married.” Therefore, all bachelors are unmarried (this is an analytic statement). This argument is sound, so I don’t think it’s appropriate to call it fallacious.

I can make the statement “the moon is made of cheese”. Is that statement true or false? How would we know?

I’m not sure what relevance this has, but I would say the statement is false. We can “know” it is false by sending astronauts up there.

The only way to show whether it is true or false is to construct an argument to show how I arrive at the statement “the moon is made of cheese”. If my argument is “the moon is made of cheese because I define cheese as the main ingredient of moons” then the argument is circular, and fallacious.

I’m not really sure you can call it fallacious, because in this case “the moon is made of cheese” is an analytic statement due to the rather bizarre definition of “cheese” in this case. By your logic any justification for the analytic statement “all bachelors are unmarried” is fallacious.

Can you construct a non-fallacious (ie non-circular) argument to show whether your statement “understanding requires consciousness” is true or false?

Again, I don’t know of any other way to justify that the phrase “understanding requires consciousness” is an analytic statement in such a way that you wouldn’t consider the justification “fallacious.”

Note that the premises are true: these are the definitions that I am using; this is what I mean when I use the terms.

Tisthammerw “asserts” that the premises are true – MF disputes that the premises are true.

Let me try this again. “This is what I mean by ‘understanding’…” is this premise true or false? Obviously it is true, because that is what I mean when I use the term. You yourself may use the word “understanding” in a different sense, but that has no bearing on the veracity of the premise, because what I mean when I use the term hasn’t changed.

You have a rather strange and confusing way of looking at analytic statements by phrasing them in the form of an argument and calling them “fallacious.”

To draw a conclusion from premises, one must make an argument. If you think it is “strange” to construct an argument in logic in order to draw conclusions then I must ask where did you learn your logic?

I’m not saying that drawing a conclusion from premises is strange, I’m saying it is strange to call logically sound arguments that demonstrate a statement to be analytic fallacious.

I am familiar with circular reasoning, but this objection doesn’t quite apply to analytic statements, and I don’t understand your insistence of phrasing my analytic statement “understanding requires consciousness” in the form of an argument when (a) you yourself admit that the analytic statement is true

Where have I admitted that the stand-alone statement “understanding requires consciousness” is true?

Remember, I was talking about the analytic statement using the terms as I have defined them. Note for instance in post #221 where you said

Given your definition of understanding, it logically follows that a non-conscious agent is unable to understand.

(b) the argument is perfectly sound anyway

The argument is circular, hence by definition fallacious.

Again, I find it very strange that you call a logically sound argument fallacious.

Have you really studied circular arguments?

Yes.

Perhaps you follow different rules of logic to the rest of us?

Different from you perhaps.

But let’s trim the fat here regarding this particular sort of circularity claim. In terms of justifying that a statement is analytic (by showing that the statement necessarily follows from the definitions of the terms), I deny that it is fallacious. If it were, all justifications for analytical statements would fail (as would most of mathematics). And in any case this is beside the point, since we already agree that the statement “understanding requires consciousness” is analytic.

To reiterate, my “argument” when it comes to “understanding requires consciousness” is merely to show that the statement is analytical (using the terms as I mean them). You can call it “fallacious’” if you want to but the fact remains that it is perfectly sound. And since we already agree that “understanding requires consciousness” is analytical, I suggest we simply move on.

Usually, circular arguments are fallacious and I recognize that. So you don’t need to preach to the choir regarding that point.

Let’s take my example above regarding the “understanding requires consciousness” argument above. The conclusion logically follows from the premises, and the premises are true.

There you go again. What did I just say? What part of “I disagree with your premise” is unclear?

It’s unclear how that has any bearing to the matter at hand (which I have pointed out many times). I understand that you don’t agree with my definition of “understanding” in that you mean something different when you use the term. But that is irrelevant to the matter at hand. I’m not saying computers can’t understand in your definition of the term, I’m talking about mine. Please read carefully this time. Do we agree that computers cannot understand in the sense that I mean when I use the term? That (given the model of a complex set of instructions manipulating input etc.) computers cannot perceive the meaning of words, and they cannot be aware of what the words mean? Simply saying, “I don't mean the same thing you do when I say ‘understanding’” doesn't really answer my question at all. So please answer it.

You misquoted me slightly, so I’ve replaced the quote with what the post actually contains:

There’s a problem here. If your definition of understanding does not require consciousness, it seems we are both using the word “perceive” quite differently, since if an entity perceives the entity possesses consciousness (using my definition of the word “consciousness”). BTW, I use “perceive” definition 1a and 2 in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. It seems you are not using the conventional definition of the word “perceive” if you are trying to define understanding in such a way that it does not require consciousness. So what do you mean when you use the term “perceive”?

Is that the online version of the dictionary you refer to? With respect there are many more definitions of “to perceive” than contained in this disctionary.

[lists a number of examples]

I never claimed otherwise, but that still doesn’t answer my question. What do you mean when you use the term “perceive”?

And there are perfectly acceptable definitions of “to perceive” which do not associate perception with consciousness.

Perhaps, but what’s your definition?

But getting to the more relevant point at hand, let’s revisit my question:

Do we agree that computers cannot understand in the sense that I mean when I use the term? That (given the model of a complex set of instructions manipulating input etc.) computers cannot perceive the meaning of words, and they cannot be aware of what the words mean? Simply saying, “I don't mean the same thing you do when I say ‘understanding’” doesn't really answer my question at all. So please answer it.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

OK, we seem to agree on the conclusion, but possibly for slightly different reasons.
The problem I have is understanding the following : If you agree with his definition “symbol manipulation is PURELY syntactic”, how can you then conclude that symbol manipulation gives rise to semantic understanding?

I believe that all information, at it's root, is syntactic. To believe otherwise would require that we believe information has some sort of platonic essence which endows it with meaning. I believe that semantic meaning emerges from the aggregate syntactic context of information. The smallest bit of information has no meaning in and of itself except in relation to other bits of information. This relationship then, lacking semantic meaning on either part, is necessarily a syntactic pattern. Once an entity has acquired a large enough amount of syntactic information and stored it in context it has developed experience, or a knowledge base. When the entity can abstract or learn from these patterns of information it will find significance in the patterns. This significance equates to the "semantic meaning" of the information so far as I believe.

We seem to agree on most of this. However I would not say that the “acquisition of” information is necessary to understanding, rather I would say that the “possession of” information is necessary to understanding.

It seems that I just prefer more "active" words.
To me they just seem to fit better.

May I ask some questions, to improve our understanding?
Do you believe the CR understands the meanings of the words it is using?
Do you believe that the words mean to the CR what they mean to people who speak/read chinese?
Do you believe the CR can hold a coherent and intelligent conversation in Chinese?

No.
No.
Yes, but only given the leaway of it being a hypothetical situation.
I'll come back to this as soon as I am done with the rest of your post.

Whichever position you argue, your argument must be consistent and rigorous. Perhaps (with respect) some of the confusion between us arises because you on the one hand “argue the position of Searle” but at the same time when I disagree with ths argument your response is often to refer me to “your own definitions” of terms rather than Searle’s? Am I debating with TheStatutoryApe here, or with Searle’s stand-in?

I've been trying to site Searle's argument and make my argument at the same time. Perhaps I haven't maintained a proper devision between what is his argumetn and what is mine but it seems you often think I agree with Searle when I do not. I tend to be under the impression that I have pointed out my disagrements with his arguments but apparently I haven't done a good enough job of that.

I agree – but would phrase it slightly differently. He chooses his definitions associated with understanding such that understanding requires conscious awareness – which ensures that any agent that is not consciously aware fails to understand. By definition.

Personally I don't think it is a matter of definitions. The only one of his definitions that is problematic, in my opinion, is his insistance that "syntax" can not yield "semantics". This follows though from the conclusion of his argument. His definitions are coloured by the conclusions of his argument but his argument isn't one of definitions. His argument is a logical hypothetical construct. The fact that his construct does not parallel reality as it claims is the real problem.

While Searle and Tisthammerw here would disagree that it can be altered in such a way as to possesses understanding I do not disagree with this.

Altered in what way?

So far there have been several ideas such as giving the man in the room access to sensory information via camera or allowing the man to be the entire system rather than just the processing chip. Every idea for altering the room though is constructed by Searle, or Tisthammerw, in a way that does not reflect reality properly and sets the man in the room up to fail. I know that you believe that the CR does in some sense possesses understanding which I do not agree with but I will have to come back to this to discuss that later.

 

[quantumcarl]

So far there have been several ideas such as giving the man in the room access to sensory information via camera or allowing the man to be the entire system rather than just the processing chip. Every idea for altering the room though is constructed by Searle, or Tisthammerw, in a way that does not reflect reality properly and sets the man in the room up to fail. I know that you believe that the CR does in some sense possesses understanding which I do not agree with but I will have to come back to this to discuss that later.

I do believe the Chinese Room possesses a component that has understanding. That component is the man in the room. He may not understand that he is answering questions in Chinese with answer's in Chinese but, he does possesses a conscious understanding, nevertheless.

The man in the room understands he is in the room. He understands (experiencially) the approx. temperature of the room and he has the ability to understand the effects the temperature in the room are having on him.

The man understands that, periodically, a piece of paper will slide under the door and he understands that he is to use the caligraphy on the paper to find, in a book, a matching symbol and its adjacent symbols. He understands that he is to copy down the adjacent symbols on to a blank piece of paper and pass this piece of paper under the door to where the previous piece of paper came from.

If the man does not understand that he is providing answers to questions then, with the evidence he has, he's not using it toward an understanding of his task... but, I have a feeling he'd get the picture at some point.

All of this understanding is supported by how the man understands he must get up off his chair to reach the door of the Chinese Room. He must take a posture of sitting in order to sit on the chair in the room... and so forth and so on.


That's why I find Searle's Chinese Room Thought Experiment to be in error. In Searle's attempt to demonstrate the lack of understanding in certain systems, he has chosen a faulty set-up for the experiment. He has included systems at both ends of the experiment that possesses the power of understanding.
This error includes using terminology (suchas "understanding") that is semantic, relative and (recently) diluted in nature. These two errors serve to offer us an unclear depiction of what Searle's point really is... but I am still holding off on declaring his experiment "invalid".

For the time being, thank you.

PS. We have a rousing disscussion going on here, thanks to all of you!

 

[Tisthammerw]

Every idea for altering the room though is constructed by Searle, or Tisthammerw, in a way that does not reflect reality properly and sets the man in the room up to fail. I know that you believe that the CR does in some sense possesses understanding which I do not agree with but I will have to come back to this to discuss that later.

Part of the reason is that nobody disputes the fact that a man can learn another language. So opening up the door and teaching him Chinese only works if you can apply that analogy to computers. And when you don't apply it to computers, I modify the experiment to model the computer (and thus set up the man to fail).

To recap the definitions I’ll be using:

In terms of a man understanding words, this is how I define understanding:

• The man actually knows what the words mean, i.e. that he perceives the meaning of the words, or to put it another way, that he is aware of the truth of what the words mean.

This particular definition of understanding requires consciousness. The definition of consciousness I’ll be using goes as follows:

• Consciousness is the state of being characterized by sensation, perception, thought, awareness, etc. By the definition in question, if an entity has any of these characteristics the entity possesses consciousness.

To see why (given the terms as defined here) understanding requires consciousness, we can instantiate a few characteristics:

• Consciousness is the state of being characterized by sensation, perception (of the meaning of words), thought (knowing the meaning of words), awareness (of the meaning of words), etc. By the definition in question, if an entity has any of these characteristics the entity possesses consciousness.

So, if a person is aware of the meaning of words, then by definition the individual possesses consciousness. A cautionary note: it is entirely possible to create other definitions of the word “understand.” One could make define “to grasp the meaning of” in such a way that would not require consciousness, though this form of understanding would perhaps be more metaphorical (at least, metaphorical to the definition supplied above). For the purposes of this thread (and all others regarding this issue) these are the definitions I’ll be using, in part because “being aware of what the words mean” seems more applicable to strong AI.

Suppose we have a robot with cameras, microphones, etc. Would the “right” program (with learning algorithms and whatever else you want) run on here produce literal understanding (keeping in mind my definitions)? My claim is no, and to justify it I appeal to the following thought experiment.

Let's call the “right” program that, if run on the robot, would produce literal understanding “program X.” Suppose this robot does indeed have program X. Let’s replace the part of the robot that would normally process the program with Bob. Bob uses a rulebook containing a complex set of instructions identical to program X. Bob does not understand what the strings of binary digits mean, but he can perform the same mathematical and logical operations the computer hardware can. We run program X, get valid output, the robot moves its limbs etc. and yet no real understanding is taking place. So it seems that even having the “right” rules and the “right” program is not enough even with a robot.

Some strong AI adherents claim that having “the right hardware and the right program” is enough for literal understanding to take place. In other words, it might not be enough just to have the right program. A critic could claim that perhaps a human running program X wouldn’t produce literal understanding, but the robot’s other “normal” processor of the program would. But it isn’t clear why that would be a relevant difference if the exact same operations are being made. Is it that the processor of the program has to be made of metal? Then does literal understanding take place? Does the processor require some kind of chemical? Does an inscription need to be engraved on it? Does it need to possesses a magic ball of yarn? What?

For TheStatutoryApe: if you think robot would possesses literal understanding with the “normal” processor and the “right” program, please answer my above questions.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

For TheStatutoryApe: if you think robot would possesses literal understanding with the “normal” processor and the “right” program, please answer my above questions.

The problem here is that you have set up your questions in such a manner that the answers are obvious. You have already delineated everything and made sure that I must abide by what YOU believe is true. I have contended before that your constructs do not parallel reality as I see it. I have made suggestions about other things to consider but you do not believe that my suggestions parallel reality. We simply don't agree and that is why I have ceased arguing the matter with you.

If all you wish is for someone to tell you that your argument is logically consistent then sure by all means it is and by the parameters of your argument I can not refute you. The same thing goes for Searle's Chinese Room. According to the parameters of the argument itself I can not refute it and it is logically cosistent.
I must maintain though that I do not agree with the parameters of either argument and therefore I do not agree that the conclusions carry weight in reality.
That is the best I can do for you.
Now I have to get going and do some thinking before I come back so as to make my last attempt at explaining to Mr. Finger why I do not agree that the CR possesses "understanding".
Thank you for your time.

 

[Tisthammerw]

For TheStatutoryApe: if you think robot would possesses literal understanding with the “normal” processor and the “right” program, please answer my above questions.

The problem here is that you have set up your questions in such a manner that the answers are obvious.

It is not at all obvious to me what your answers to my questions are. Please tell me what your answers are. Or do you really believe that a computer, even with the “right” program, cannot understand (which is what my answer to the argument is)?

I have contended before that your constructs do not parallel reality as I see it. I have made suggestions about other things to consider but you do not believe that my suggestions parallel reality.

Well, one of your constructs was teaching the man Chinese: you open the door, introduce him to objects, speak Chinese words while pointing to the objects etc. You claimed this paralleled reality for a computer. It seemed you were saying that a robot (with cameras and microphones) with the “right” program would thus be able to understand Chinese. But this proposal completely ignores the problem presented by the robot and program X. Here we do have the “right” program in a machine with sensors etc. and still there is (I claim) no understanding.

Do you think that this robot with the “right” program with its “normal” processor would possesses literal understanding? I would really like to know your answer here. And if the answer is “yes” please answer my other questions.

I must maintain though that I do not agree with the parameters of either argument and therefore I do not agree that the conclusions carry weight in reality.

But how is that possible? Especially in the latter case where the robot is using its “normal” processor? The robot has eyes (cameras) ears (microphones) and the “right” program (with any and all learning algorithms that you could want). What more could you ask for? Is there “something else” required that I don’t know about?

 

[moving finger]

I agree that understanding is not a prerequisite for translation, but I would suggest that to perform an accurate translation of one complex language into another it helps to understand both languages.

A person who uses Mongolian as a language can translate French into English using translation texts without ever possessing an understanding of either French or English and the origins of those two languages.

It would seem you did not bother to read my reply.
I agreed that understanding is not a prerequisite for translation, but I suggested that to perform an accurate translation of one complex language into another it helps to understand both languages. You seemed to ignore this. Do you dispute it?

What is the basis of your "argument"?

There is no evidence that empathy is necessarily required for understanding to take place.

There is no microscopic part of the brain which "understands" what it is doing, just as none of the individual translators in your example "understands" what it is doing. Each component is simply following deterministic rules to generate output from input.

I could be wrong but, even neuroscientists are unsure of how or why neurons behave in certain ways and are able to preform certain functions in addition to preforming functions that were previously preformed by other, specified neurons.

Do you disagree with the statement “There is no microscopic part of the brain which "understands" what it is doing”?

If you are saying that understanding is not guilty by the association of relying on empathy and consciousness to be defined, in my opinion, you are wrong.

“guilty by association”? What is that supposed to mean?

We call it "understanding".

Correction.. “You” call it understanding.

translate Chinese" into what?

Thanks for reminding me.

Do you have an answer for the question?

If the whole purpose of the experiment is to determine the difference between how a machine processes information and how a human process information... the experiment is lacking control by using a human in the CR.

Replace the human with a mechanical device – the CR performs exactly the same as before (because all the human is doing is manipulating symbols on paper – this is his sole function).

MF

 

[moving finger]

In the absence of an objective explanation there is no objective way of
testing for consciousness. Of course there is still a subjective way; if
you are conscious, the very fact that you are conscious tells you you are
conscious. Hence Searle puts himself inside the room.

This subjective “test” that you suggest only allows the subject to determine whether “itself” is conscious. It says nothing about the consciousness of anything else.
.

That consciousness is part of understanding is established by the definitions of the words and the way language is used.

As I said, a circular argument
“consciousness is required for understanding” is a proposition (or statement), which can be either asserted or denied.
Whether “consciousness is required for understanding” is either an analytic or a synthetic statement is open to question, and depends on which definition of understanding one accepts.
According to MF’s definition of understanding, the statement “consciousness is required for understanding” is clearly synthetic.
To simply assert that the statement “consciousness is required for understanding” is true, and then to use this as a premise in an argument which concludes “understanding is not possible without consciousness”, results in a circular argument.
A circular argument shows nothing except that “whatever we assert to be true is true”.
If the conclusion of the argument is already contained within the premises of the argument then the argument is fallacious. You may not like the idea, but that is accepted logic.

The basic problem is that to engage in any rational debate about anything, we need a common language. We clearly do not have a common language, since "understanding" does not mean the same thing to you as it does to me.

An example. If the term "person" means "human being" to you, but to me "person" means "humanoid", then the statement "all persons are examples of the species homo sapiens" would be an analytic statement to you, but NOT to me.

Until we can agree on the language we are using, we will continue to disagree whether the statement "understanding requires consciousness" is analytic or not.

As I have stated several times, the intelligence of an artificial intelligence
needs to be pinned to human intelligence (albeit not it in a way that makes it
trivially impossible) in order to make the claim of "artificiallity"
intelligible. Otherwise, the computer is just doing something -- something
that might as well be called infromation-processing,or symbol manipulation.

Imho this is just what the human brain does – information-processing,or symbol manipulation.

No-one can doubt that computers can do those things, and Searle doesn't
either. Detaching the intelligence of the CR from human intelligence does
nothing to counteract the argument of the CR; in fact it is suicidal to the
strong AI case.

Where has anyone suggested “detaching the intelligence of the CR from human intelligence” ? (whatever this might mean)

But consciousness is a defintional quality of understanding, just as being umarried is being a defintional quality of being a bachelor.

Consciousness is not a definitional quality of understanding in my definition.

Is "bachelors are unmarried because bachelors are unmarried" viciously
circular too ? Or is it -- as every logician everywhere maintains -- a
necessary, analytical truth ?

The difference between an analytic statement and a synthetic one is that the former are true “by definition”, therefore to claim that something is an “analytical truth” is a non-sequitur. Analytic statements are essentially uninformative tautologies.
However, whether the statement “consciousness is necessary for understanding” is analytic or synthetic is open to debate. In my world (where I define understanding such that consciousness is not necessary for understanding), it is synthetic.
I guess that Tournesol would claim the statement “all unicorns eat meat” is synthetic, and not analytic?
But if I now declare “I define a unicorn as a carnivorous animal”” then (using your reasoning) I can claim the statement is now analytic, not synthetic.
According to your reasoning, I can now argue “all unicorns eat meat because I define a unicorn as a carnivorous animal”, and this argument is a sound argument?
This is precisely what the argument “consciousness requires understanding because I define consciousness as necessary for understanding” boils down to.

If you understand something , you can report that you know it, explain how you know it. etc.

Not necessarily. The ability “to report” requires more than just “understanding Chinese”.

That higher-level knowing-how-you-know is consciousness by definition.

I suppose this is your definition of consciousness? Is this an analytic statement again?

The question is whether syntax is sufficient for semantics.

I’m glad that you brought us back to the Searle CR argument again. Because I see no evidence that the CR does not understand semantics

If it is necessary but insufficient criterion for consciousness, and the CR doesn't have it, the CR doesn't have consciousness.

Not very relevant, since I am not claiming the CR does have consciousness.

How else would you do it ? Test for understanding without knowing what
"understanding means". Beg the question in the other direction by
re-defining "understanding" to not require consciousness ?

Are you suggesting the “correct” way to establish whether “understanding requires consciousness” is “by definition”?
The correct way to do it is NOT by definition at all. All this achieves is the equivalent of the ancient Greeks deciding how many teeth in a horse’s mouth “by debate” instead of by experiment.
In simple summary, here is the correct way :
Hypothesis : Understanding requires consciousness
Develop the hypothesis further – what predictions would this hypothesis make that could be tested experimentally?
Then carry out experimental tests of the hypothesis (try to falsify it)

I am suggesting that no-one can write a definition that conveys the
sensory, experiential quality.

“Experiential quality” is not “understanding”
I do not need the “sensory experiential quality” of red to understand red, any more than I need the “sensory experiential quality” of x-rays to understand x-rays, or the “sensory experiential quality” of flying to understand aerodynamics.

You seem to be saying that
non-experiential knowledge ("red light has a wavelentght of 500nm") *is*
understanding, and all there is to understanding, and experience is
something extraneous that does not belong to understanding at all
(in contradiction to the conclusion of "What Mary Knew").

The conclusion to “What Mary Knew” is disputed.

It is perfectly reasonable to suggest that anyone needs normal vision in order to fully understand colour terms in any language.

Perhaps reasonable to you, not to me.

I disagree. I do not need to have the power of flight to understand aerodynamics.

To theoretically understand it.

Sense-experience is not understanding.

Vision is simply an access to experiential information, a person who “sees red” does not necessarily understand anything about “red” apart from the experiential aspect (which imho is not “understanding”).

How remarkably convenient. Tell me, is that true analytically, by defintion,
or is it an observed fact ?

Yes, isn’t it convenient? Just as convenient as concluding that “understanding requires consciousness because I define consciousness as necessary for understanding”?
Shall we start debating again whether particular statements are analytic or synthetic?

It doesn't have any human-style senses at all. Like Wittgenstien's lion, but
more so.

Information and knowledge are required for understanding, not senses.

they understand just what Mary doesn't: what it looks like.

“what it looks like” is sense-experience, it is not understanding.

However, I do not need to argue that non-experiential knowledge is not knowledge.

Why not - is this perhaps yet another analytic statement?

However, if you can do both you clearly have more understanding than someone
who can only do one or the other or neither.

Its not at all “clear” to me – or perhaps you also “define” understanding as “requiring sense-experience”? Analytic again?

(Would you want to fly in a plane piloted by someone who had never been in the
air before ?)

the question is irrelevant – because “ability to fly a plane” is not synonymous with “understanding flight”.
Are you saying you only put your trust in the pilot because he “understands”?
If the same plane is now put onto autopilot, would you suddenly want to bail out with a parachute because (in your definition) machines “do not possesses understanding”?

They don't know what Mary doesn't know.

We are talking about “understanding”, not simply an experiential quality.
What is it that you think Mary “understands” once she has “experienced seeing red” that she necessarily did NOT understand before she had “experienced seeing red”?
(remember – by definition Mary already “knows all there is to know about the colour red”, and sense-experience is sense-experience, it is not understanding)

I claim that experience is necessary for a *full* understanding of *sensory*
language, and that an entity without sensory exprience therefore lacks full
semantics.

And I claim they are not. The senses are merely “possible conduits” of information.
There is no reason why all of the information required to “understand red”, or to “understand a concept” cannot be encoded directly into the computer (or CR) as part of its initial program. In principle, no sense-receptors are needed at all. The computer or CR can be totally blind (ie have no sense receptors) but still incorporate all of the information needed in order to understand red, syntactically and semantically. This is the thesis of strong AI, which you seem to dispute.

If you are going to counter this claim as stated, you need to rise to the
challenge and show how a *verbal* definition of "red" can convey the *experiential*
meaning of "red".

My claim (and that of strong AI) is that it is simply information, and not necessarily direct access to information from sense-receptors, that is required for understanding. Senses in humans are a means of conveying information – but that is all they are. This need not be the case in all possible agents, and is not the case in the CR. If we could “program the human brain” with the same information then it would have the same understanding, in the absence of any sense-receptors.
with respect
MF

 

[moving finger]

Well, yes. I have said many times that the answer to the question depends on the definition of “understanding” and “consciousness” used.

it follows that the statement “understanding requires consciousness” is not analytic after all, it is synthetic (because it is not accepted that the statement and premise “understanding requires consciousness” is necessarily true).
“conscious is required for understanding” is a proposition (or statement), which can be either asserted or denied.
Whether “conscious is required for understanding” is either an analytic or a synthetic statement is open to question, and depends on which definition of understanding one accepts.
According to MF’s definition of understanding, the statement “consciousness is required for understanding” is clearly synthetic.
To simply assert that the statement “consciousness is required for understanding” is true, and then to use this as a premise in an argument which concludes “understanding is not possible without consciousness”, results in a circular argument.
A circular argument shows nothing except that “whatever we assert to be true is true”.
If the conclusion of the argument is already contained within the premises of the argument then the argument is fallacious. You may not like the idea, but that is accepted logic.
The basic problem is that to engage in any rational debate about anything, we need a common language. You and I clearly do not have a common language, since "understanding" does not mean the same thing to you as it does to me.
An example. If the term "person" means "human being" to you, but to me "person" means "humanoid", then the statement "all persons are examples of the species homo sapiens" would be an analytic statement to you, but NOT to me.
Until we can agree on the language we are using, we will continue to disagree whether the statement "understanding requires consciousness" is analytic or not.
The question “does understanding require consciousness?” cannot be resolved by debate alone.

I can make the statement “the moon is made of cheese”. Is that statement true or false? How would we know?

I’m not sure what relevance this has, but I would say the statement is false. We can “know” it is false by sending astronauts up there.

Excellent! I agree 10000%
To continue the analogy – I hope you are not suggesting that the “correct” way to establish whether “understanding requires consciousness” is “by definition”?
The correct way to do it is not by definition at all. All this achieves is the equivalent of the ancient Greeks deciding how many teeth in a horse’s mouth “by debate” instead of by experiment.
The correct way (as you pointed out) :
Hypothesis : Understanding requires consciousness
Develop the hypothesis further – what predictions would this hypothesis make that could be tested experimentally?
Then carry out experimental tests of the hypothesis (try to falsify it)

I’m not really sure you can call it fallacious, because in this case “the moon is made of cheese” is an analytic statement due to the rather bizarre definition of “cheese” in this case. By your logic any justification for the analytic statement “all bachelors are unmarried” is fallacious.

Again, I have not said that any statement is fallacious.
Statements are either true or false.
If a statement is true by definition (an analytic statement) then it becomes essentially an uninformative tautology. A tautology is necessarily true, but that tells us nothing useful.

Let me try this again. “This is what I mean by ‘understanding’…” is this premise true or false? Obviously it is true, because that is what I mean when I use the term. You yourself may use the word “understanding” in a different sense, but that has no bearing on the veracity of the premise, because what I mean when I use the term hasn’t changed.

It is not what I mean when I use the term, therefore (to me) the premise is false.

I’m not saying that drawing a conclusion from premises is strange, I’m saying it is strange to call logically sound arguments that demonstrate a statement to be analytic fallacious.

A tautological or circular argument is logically valid, but it nevertheless is a fallacious argument. Why? Because there is no way to know whether a circular argument is sound or not, because the truth of the conclusion is contained in the assumed veracity of the premises.
You may think this is strange, but it is accepted in logic.

I dispute that the conclusion "consciousness is necessary for understanding" is sound because it is not obvious to me that your premise “understanding requires consciousness” is necessarily true. You counter by saying “I DEFINE understanding as requiring consciousness” – does this now make an unsound argument sound? Of course it doesn’t. It simply makes it circular. And circular arguments are fallacious.

Again, I find it very strange that you call a logically valid argument fallacious.

A tautological or circular argument is logically valid, but it’s soundness is implicitly assumed in the veracity of the premises – hence by virtue of being circular it is a fallacious argument. You may think this is strange, but it is accepted in logic.

But let’s trim the fat here regarding this particular sort of circularity claim. In terms of justifying that a statement is analytic (by showing that the statement necessarily follows from the definitions of the terms), I deny that it is fallacious.

I never said any statement was fallacious.
To me, the statement “understanding requires consciousness” is synthetic, not analytic.

If it were, all justifications for analytical statements would fail (as would most of mathematics).

Justifications for analytic statements require a common language. Youn and I dispute the meaning and definition of understanding. That is the root problem.

And in any case this is beside the point, since we already agree that the statement “understanding requires consciousness” is analytic.

Is it? It comes again to having a “common language”. We do not share a common language because “understanding” does not mean to you what it means to me. Thus what is analytic to you is not necessarily so to me, and vice versa.

since we already agree that “understanding requires consciousness” is analytical, I suggest we simply move on.

We don’t. It may be analytic to you, not to me.

Usually, circular arguments are fallacious and I recognize that. So you don’t need to preach to the choir regarding that point.

But circular arguments are logically valid. The conclusion does indeed from the premises. I thought you found it strange that a logically valid argument could be fallacious? And now you are agreeing with me that circular arguments are fallacious?
Take the example
• Suppose Paul is not lying when he speaks.
• Paul is speaking.
• Therefore, Paul is telling the truth.
Is this, or is it not, a circular argument? It is perfectly valid (the conclusion follows from the premises), but the veracity of the conclusion “Paul is telling the truth” depends on the veracity of the premise “suppose Paul is not lying when he speaks”. If I dispute the premise, the argument is unsound.
Because the argument is circular, the veracity of the conclusion is already assumed in the assumed premise, therefore it is fallacious.
Now replace the premise “suppose Paul is lying when he speaks” with the premise “suppose understanding requires consciousness”
And replace “Paul is speaking” with “Paul is not conscious”
And replace the conclusion “Therefore, Paul is telling the truth” with the conclusion “Therefore, Paul does not understand”
The entire argument is now :
• Suppose understanding requires consciousness
• Paul is not conscious
• Therefore, Paul does not understand
Which is still a circular argument (you have admitted yourself that your argument is circular!) and it is by definition fallacious.

What part of “I disagree with your premise” is unclear?

It’s unclear how that has any bearing to the matter at hand (which I have pointed out many times).

It’s unclear how “I disagree with your premise” has any bearing?
It’s quite simple. If the premises are not true, the conclusion is not necessarily true, and the argument is then unsound.

Please read carefully this time. Do we agree that computers cannot understand in the sense that I mean when I use the term? That (given the model of a complex set of instructions manipulating input etc.) computers cannot perceive the meaning of words, and they cannot be aware of what the words mean?

I have read your statement very carefully, and No, I do not agree.
We have not been debating here about whether “computers can understand” per se. We have been debating whether a non-conscious agent can understand. Your argument thus far has not been that “computers cannot understand” it has been “non-conscious agents cannot understand”. You have not shown that all computer agents are necessarily non-conscious.

I never claimed otherwise, but that still doesn’t answer my question. What do you mean when you use the term “perceive”?

As simply as possible : “To perceive” is to acquire, process, interpret, select, and organise information as part of a knowledge-base.

But getting to the more relevant point at hand, let’s revisit my question:
Do we agree that computers cannot understand in the sense that I mean when I use the term? That (given the model of a complex set of instructions manipulating input etc.) computers cannot perceive the meaning of words, and they cannot be aware of what the words mean? Simply saying, “I don't mean the same thing you do when I say ‘understanding’” doesn't really answer my question at all. So please answer it.

No, I do not agree.
We have not been debating here about whether “computers can understand” per se. We have been debating whether a non-conscious agent can understand. Your argument thus far has not been that “computers cannot understand” it has been “non-conscious agents cannot understand”. You have not shown that all computer agents are necessarily non-conscious.
MF

 

[moving finger]

I believe that all information, at it's root, is syntactic. To believe otherwise would require that we believe information has some sort of platonic essence which endows it with meaning.
I believe that semantic meaning emerges from the aggregate syntactic context of information. The smallest bit of information has no meaning in and of itself except in relation to other bits of information. This relationship then, lacking semantic meaning on either part, is necessarily a syntactic pattern. Once an entity has acquired a large enough amount of syntactic information and stored it in context it has developed experience, or a knowledge base. When the entity can abstract or learn from these patterns of information it will find significance in the patterns. This significance equates to the "semantic meaning" of the information so far as I believe.

I broadly agree, but in the case of syntax I would put it the other way about.
In my view, at the core is “information”. The information “in and by itself” contains no syntax or semantics. Syntax (to me) is a property which arises or emerges from the subsequent manipulation of the information, the application of rules of correlation between the information (the rules are in themselves also information) and the relationships between one piece of information and another.
It seems to me that semantics is also emergent as just a higher level of the same type of information processing - manipulation of the information, the application of rules of correlation between the information, and the relationships between one piece of information and another.
I guess we are fairly close in our concepts.

We seem to agree on most of this. However I would not say that the “acquisition of” information is necessary to understanding, rather I would say that the “possession of” information is necessary to understanding.

It seems that I just prefer more "active" words.
To me they just seem to fit better.

The reason I prefer “possession” is that I can envisage in principle an agent which understands (pre-programmed information) but has no sense-receptors (ie cannot acquire new information). This understanding requires possession of information in the first place, but not necessarily the ability to acquire new information.

Do you believe the CR understands the meanings of the words it is using?

No.

Interesting. I do.

Do you believe that the words mean to the CR what they mean to people who speak/read chinese?

No.

I tend to agree with you here.

Do you believe the CR can hold a coherent and intelligent conversation in Chinese?

Yes, but only given the leaway of it being a hypothetical situation.

OK

I've been trying to site Searle's argument and make my argument at the same time. Perhaps I haven't maintained a proper devision between what is his argumetn and what is mine but it seems you often think I agree with Searle when I do not.

Yes, I did tend to think that. I apologise if I was mistaken.

So far there have been several ideas such as giving the man in the room access to sensory information via camera or allowing the man to be the entire system rather than just the processing chip. Every idea for altering the room though is constructed by Searle, or Tisthammerw, in a way that does not reflect reality properly and sets the man in the room up to fail. I know that you believe that the CR does in some sense possesses understanding which I do not agree with but I will have to come back to this to discuss that later.

OK, I look forward to that, also to finding out why you believe that the CR does not possesses understanding.
One final question if you have any time :
Do you believe there is a fundamental difference between a “process” and a “perfect simulation of that process”?
(Note I am not talking here about simulating objects – but about simulating processes)
Searle’s argument seems to base itself on the assertion that a “simulated process” is just that – a simulated process – and somehow differs from the “real process”. I dispute that assertion. But I’m interested to know what you think.
MF

 

[Tisthammerw]

Well, yes. I have said many times that the answer to the question depends on the definition of “understanding” and “consciousness” used.

it follows that the statement “understanding requires consciousness” is not analytic after all

Whether the statement is analytic depends on the definitions used. If my definitions of the terms are used, then the statement “understanding requires consciousness” is analytic.

According to MF’s definition of understanding, the statement “consciousness is required for understanding” is clearly synthetic.

I'm not sure how something like that could be determined by observation, but I suppose that might depend on how you define those terms.

If the conclusion of the argument is already contained within the premises of the argument then the argument is fallacious.

...

The basic problem is that to engage in any rational debate about anything, we need a common language. You and I clearly do not have a common language, since "understanding" does not mean the same thing to you as it does to me.

...

But circular arguments are logically valid. The conclusion does indeed from the premises. I thought you found it strange that a logically valid argument could be fallacious? And now you are agreeing with me that circular arguments are fallacious?
Take the example
...

You seem to be repeating yourself somewhat. I have responded to this sort of thing in the latter half of post #239 in the other thread.

I’m not sure what relevance this has, but I would say the statement is false. We can “know” it is false by sending astronauts up there.

Excellent! I agree 10000%
To continue the analogy – I hope you are not suggesting that the “correct” way to establish whether “understanding requires consciousness” is “by definition”?

If we the kind of understanding we are talking about is TH-Understanding, then we do not agree; since in this case it can be shown that “understanding requires consciousness” is an analytic statement.

The correct way to do it is not by definition at all. All this achieves is the equivalent of the ancient Greeks deciding how many teeth in a horse’s mouth “by debate” instead of by experiment.

The Greeks were also responsible for various advances in mathematics, which is all done by definition of terms. Some things can be demonstrated via definition (e.g. “all bachelors are unmarried” and “2 + 2 = 4”), others (e.g. how many teeth are inside a horse’s mouth) cannot.

I’m not really sure you can call it fallacious, because in this case “the moon is made of cheese” is an analytic statement due to the rather bizarre definition of “cheese” in this case. By your logic any justification for the analytic statement “all bachelors are unmarried” is fallacious.

Again, I have not said that any statement is fallacious.

I was referring to the argument used to justify that the statement is analytic.

Let me try this again. “This is what I mean by ‘understanding’…” is this premise true or false? Obviously it is true, because that is what I mean when I use the term. You yourself may use the word “understanding” in a different sense, but that has no bearing on the veracity of the premise, because what I mean when I use the term hasn’t changed.

It is not what I mean when I use the term, therefore (to me) the premise is false.

No, the premise is true, because the premise is not what you mean when you use the term, it is what I mean when I use the term. My definition of understanding is what you have called “TH-understanding.” Therefore, my conclusion could be rephrased as “consciousness is required for TH-understanding.” I have said time and time again that the statement “understanding requires consciousness” is analytic for my definitions; not necessarily yours.

The premise “This is what I mean by understanding…” is true because it is what I mean by understanding. See #239 in the other thread for more info on this.

But let’s trim the fat here regarding this particular sort of circularity claim. In terms of justifying that a statement is analytic (by showing that the statement necessarily follows from the definitions of the terms), I deny that it is fallacious.

I never said any statement was fallacious.

Again, I am referring to the argument used to justify that a statement is analytic.


Note on below: I put my quote into full context.

It’s unclear how that has any bearing to the matter at hand (which I have pointed out many times). I understand that you don’t agree with my definition of “understanding” in that you mean something different when you use the term. But that is irrelevant to the matter at hand. I’m not saying computers can’t understand in your definition of the term, I’m talking about mine. Please read carefully this time. Do we agree that computers cannot understand in the sense that I mean when I use the term? That (given the model of a complex set of instructions manipulating input etc.) computers cannot perceive the meaning of words, and they cannot be aware of what the words mean? Simply saying, “I don't mean the same thing you do when I say ‘understanding’” doesn't really answer my question at all. So please answer it.

It’s unclear how “I disagree with your premise” has any bearing?

On the matter the quote is referring to, yes. It is very unclear.

It’s quite simple. If the premises are not true, the conclusion is not necessarily true, and the argument is then unsound.

Ah, so you “disagree” with the premise in that you believe it to be false. But you have not shown that “TH-understanding requires consciousness” is not an analytic statement, whereas I have shown the opposite. And “I don’t mean the same thing you do when I say ‘understanding’” is not at all relevant regarding if computers have the kind of understanding that I mean when I use the term.

Please read carefully this time. Do we agree that computers cannot understand in the sense that I mean when I use the term? That (given the model of a complex set of instructions manipulating input etc.) computers cannot perceive the meaning of words, and they cannot be aware of what the words mean?

I have read your statement very carefully, and No, I do not agree.

So you don’t agree that computers (given the model I described) cannot have TH-understanding? Well then, please look at post #102 of this thread where I justify my claim that computers (of this sort) cannot have TH-understanding. Now we can finally get to the matter at hand.

As simply as possible : “To perceive” is to acquire, process, interpret, select, and organise information as part of a knowledge-base.

It’s still a little fuzzy here. For instance, are you saying a person can “perceive” an intensely bright light without being aware of it through the senses? If so, we are indeed using different definitions of the term (since in this case I would be referring to
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=perceive).

Your argument thus far has not been that “computers cannot understand”

Please see post #102

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I only read the first few posts in this thread so please forgive me if someone else has already expressed this idea.

Turing says that whatever it is in the room, it thinks. Searle says no. Neither gives a reason why. End of interesting argument.

 

[Tisthammerw]

I only read the first few posts in this thread so please forgive me if someone else has already expressed this idea.
Turing says that whatever it is in the room, it thinks. Searle says no.

No, not quite.

Turing says that if something (e.g. a program) can simulate understanding (e.g. a conversation) it necessarily understands. Searle says no, and gives a counterexample called the Chinese room thought experiment.

The original Chinese room thought experiment was in response to something similar to the Turing test. In the scenario Searle addressed, imagine a computer program that is fed a story (e.g. about a man buying pie) and questions regarding the story (e.g. what pie did the man buy?) to which the program gives answers to.

The Chinese room thought experiment goes as follows. Suppose we have a man in a room whose only language is English. Near him are stacks of paper written in Chinese. He can recognize and distinguish Chinese characters, but he cannot discern their meaning. He has a rulebook written in English containing a complex set of instructions of what to write given the Chinese characters written on the slips of paper. When he looks at the slips of paper, he writes down another set of Chinese characters according to the rules in the rulebook. Unbeknownst to the man in the room, one stack of papers are stories written in Chinese, another stack of papers actually contains questions, and the man is writing back answers. The rulebook (the “program”) works well enough so that, from the point of view of a person outside the room, the answers are indistinguishable from a native speaker of Chinese.

Variants of this thought experiment could be made, including a kind of Turing test for understanding Chinese. One slips questions written in Chinese under the door, and the man writes back answers using the complex set of instructions contained in the rulebook. Again, responses are indistinguishable from a native speaker of Chinese. Yet it would seem that the man inside the room does not understand, nor does the book, nor the slips of paper. Thus, the thought experiment has been used as a counterexample to the claim that passing the Turing test is sufficient for literal understanding.

 

[quantumcarl]

I agreed that understanding is not a prerequisite for translation, but I suggested that to perform an accurate translation of one complex language into another it helps to understand both languages. Do you dispute it?

I have refined my position somewhat during the course of the discussion.
I dispute the use of the word "understand" in the context of comprehending languages. I know "everyone" uses the word to describe a knowledge of the gramatical, linguistical and vocabular components of a language but, I believe the word " has a rarer and less readily available definition... one that it was intended for during its first use... some milenia ago.

One does not, by my defintion, understand a language except by how it feels to speak it and the cultural differences it has to offer one's senses.
One cannot "understand" a language, by my definition, yet one can comprehend what a language is conveying. By my definition, understanding a language would be like trying to understand a grain of sand... impossible... one could understand the processes involved in creating a grain of sand, one can understand what a grain of sand feels like in the butt crack... and one could understand what a grain of sand is made of... etc... but, one cannot understand a grain of sand. Just as one cannot "understand" a language.

I hope this demonstrates to you why deem the use of the term, "understanding" in the context of language comprehension and in the Chinese Room Thought Experiment incorrect and out of context.

There is no evidence that empathy is necessarily required for understanding to take place.

If you meant that you, personally, have no necessity for empathy to arrive at an understanding of an issue, I'd question what you mean by "an understanding". This is because, by my definition of the word understanding, (which is a compound word composed of "under" and "standing") empathy and understanding are close to being synonyms of one another.

Do you disagree with the statement “There is no microscopic part of the brain which "understands" what it is doing”?

Until I am a microscopic part of a brain I will not be able to answer that.

As I said earlier, neurons behave in ways that conventional cells don't. I may go as far as to say that a cell is capable of understanding because, a cell is as evolved as the rest of an organism. So, in that case, it is possible that a single cell (plant or animal) possess's a conscious understanding of its existence and its function.

“guilty by association”? What is that supposed to mean?

I have used a word out of context and it has rendered my statement invalid much in the way the CR experiment has used non-contextual terminology, rendering it, invaid.

Do you have an answer for the question?

Here you are asking me what the Chinese Room is translating.

It is translating nothing. The man in the CR is translating, by definition, the caligraphy that is passed to him. He uses the first caligraphy to find a counterpart which has additional information associated with it. This is a form of translation and the actions certainly mimic an act of translation.

Replace the human with a mechanical device – the CR performs exactly the same as before (because all the human is doing is manipulating symbols on paper – this is his sole function).MF

The human must remain conscious, aware and he must care (empathize) enough to perform what has been requested of him in order to complete a flawed experiment.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

One final question if you have any time :
Do you believe there is a fundamental difference between a “process” and a “perfect simulation of that process”?
(Note I am not talking here about simulating objects – but about simulating processes)
Searle’s argument seems to base itself on the assertion that a “simulated process” is just that – a simulated process – and somehow differs from the “real process”. I dispute that assertion. But I’m interested to know what you think.

Yes, I was meaning to get to this question at the same time since my explination and answer to this question are linked.

Searle builds the CR in such a manner that it is a reactionary machine spitting out preformulated answers to predetermined questions. The machine is not "thoughtful" in this process, that is it does not contemplate the question or the answer, it merely follows it's command to replace one predetermined script with another preformulated script. I do not believe that this constitutes "understanding" of the scripts contents. Why?
First of all as already pointed out the machine is purely reactionary. It doesn't "think" about the questions or the answers it only "thinks" about the rote process of interchanging them, if you would like to even consider that thinking. The whole process is predetermined by the designer who has already done all of the thinking and formulating (this part is important to my explination but I will delve into that deeper later). The CR never considers the meanings of the words only the predetermined relationships between the scripts. In fact the designer does not even give the CR the leaway by which to consider these things, it is merely programed to do the job of interchanging scripts.
Next, the CR is not privy to the information that is represented by the words it interchanges. Why? It isn't programed with that information. It is only programed with the words. The words, though a form of information in and of themselves, are representative of information about reality as determined by the entities who have formulated them. This is what gives them their semantic property, or rather the semantic property exists in the minds and knowledge of those that have agreed upon the system of communication. The CR contains no raw information about reality and has no means by which to acquire it let alone the leaway or motivation with in it's program to do so.
Lastly, the manner in which the simulation of understanding is achieved in the CR. The designer of the CR's program undoubtedly has an understanding of Chinese. When the designer predetermines the questions and formulates the answers he is making a mirror of his own understanding in the program. But this does not actually endow the program itself with understanding. If the designer were to write a letter out on a piece of paper in chinese the letter itself does not possesses understanding it only reflects the authors understanding. When the designer authors the CR responses he is making them to reflect his own understanding of chinese, they are simply multiple letters in chinese insead of just one.
The designer instead of a program could create a simple mechanical device. It could be a cabinet. On a table next to the cabinet there could be several wooden balls of various sizes. On these balls we can have questions printed, these parallel the predetermined questions in the CR program. There can be a chute opening on top of the cabinet where one is instructed to insert the ball with the question of their choice, paralleling the slot where the message from the outside world comes to the man in the CR. Inside the cabinet the chute leads to an inclined track with two rails that widen as the track progresses. At the point where the smallest of the balls will fall between the rails the ball will fall and hit a mechanism that will drop another ball through a chute and into a cup outside the cabinet where the questioner is awaiting an answer. On this ball there is printed an answer corresponding to the question printed on the smallest of the balls. The same is done for each of the balls of varying sizes. The cabinet is now answering questions put to it in fundamentally the same manner as the CR. The only elements lacking are the vastness of possible questions and answers and the illusion that the CR does not know the questions before they are asked.
So does that cabinet possess understanding of the questions and answers? Or does it merely reflect the understanding of the designer?

Now on the difference between a "perfect simulation" and the real thing.
I guess this depends really on your definition of "simulation". Mine personally is anything that is made to fool the observer into believing it is something other than it really is. A "perfect simulation" I would classify as something that fools the observer in every way until the simulation is deconstructed showing that the elements that seemed to be present were in fact not present. If something can be deconstructed completely and still be indestinguishable from the real thing then I would call that a "reproduction" as opposed to a "simulation".
In the case of the CR I would say that once you have deconstructed the simulation you will find that the process occurring is not the same as the process of "understanding" as you define it (or at least as I define it) even though it produces the same output.
And if it produces the same output then what is the difference between the processes? If all you are concerned about is the output then none obviously. If you care about the manner in which the work then there are obviously differances. Also which process is more effective and economical? Which process is capable of creative and original thinking? Which process allows for freewill (if such a thing exists)? Which process is most dynamic and flexible? I could go on for a while here. It stands that the processes are fundamentally different and allow for differing possibilities though are equally capable of communicating in chinese.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

One cannot "understand" a language, by my definition, yet one can comprehend what a language is conveying. By my definition, understanding a language would be like trying to understand a grain of sand... impossible... one could understand the processes involved in creating a grain of sand, one can understand what a grain of sand feels like in the butt crack... and one could understand what a grain of sand is made of... etc... but, one cannot understand a grain of sand. Just as one cannot "understand" a language.

I hope this demonstrates to you why deem the use of the term, "understanding" in the context of language comprehension and in the Chinese Room Thought Experiment incorrect and out of context.

I see! This is very good, I would have to agree with your conclusions here. So you are defining the process of understanding as a strictly personal experience? So the "understanding" of language then would actually be the personal "understanding" of the perception of language? Purely a personal epistemological issue?

 

[moving finger]

Whether the statement is analytic depends on the definitions used. If my definitions of the terms are used, then the statement “understanding requires consciousness” is analytic.

We seem to agree that "for two agents to agree on whether a statement is analytic or not" requires that the agents first agree the definitions of terms used in the statement. This much seems obvious. We do not agree on the definition of understanding, therefore we do not agree the statement “understanding requires consciousness” is analytic.

You seem to be repeating yourself somewhat.

Yes I am repeating myself, because most of my posts are replying to the same things that you keep repeating. As I have said several times before, we keep repeating the same cycle of questions and answers, and this is becoming pointless.

If we the kind of understanding we are talking about is TH-Understanding, then we do not agree; since in this case it can be shown that “understanding requires consciousness” is an analytic statement.

Let's "trim the fat" as you suggested.

I suggest the following :

“TH-Understanding requires consciousness” is an analytic statement
“MF-Understanding does not require consciousness” is also an analytic statement.
But "Understanding requires consciousness" is a synthetic statement, because we do not agree on the definition of "understanding".

Do you agree?

This imho sums it up.

Please read carefully this time. Do we agree that computers cannot understand in the sense that I mean when I use the term? That (given the model of a complex set of instructions manipulating input etc.) computers cannot perceive the meaning of words, and they cannot be aware of what the words mean? Simply saying, “I don't mean the same thing you do when I say ‘understanding’” doesn't really answer my question at all. So please answer it.

Please read my complete answer very carefully this time. I am here replying to your precise question as phrased above. You have not shown that all computer agents are necessarily non-conscious. Therefore I do not agree.

But you have not shown that “TH-understanding requires consciousness” is not an analytic statement, whereas I have shown the opposite.

I have never denied that the statement “TH-Understanding requires consciousness” is analytic, you again are making mistakes in your reading and comprehension of these posts. Please read more carefully.

Please read carefully this time. Do we agree that computers cannot understand in the sense that I mean when I use the term? That (given the model of a complex set of instructions manipulating input etc.) computers cannot perceive the meaning of words, and they cannot be aware of what the words mean?

Please read my complete answer very carefully.
Let me help you out here. I am here replying to your precise question as phrased above. By “understand in the sense that I mean when I use the term “ I assume you mean “TH-Understanding”.
Your question is thus “Do you agree that computers cannot TH-Understand?”.
Now TH-Understanding is defined such that it requires consciousness.
But you have not shown that all computer agents are necessarily not conscious, therefore I do not see how the question can be answered.

So you don’t agree that computers (given the model I described) cannot have TH-understanding? Well then, please look at post #102 of this thread where I justify my claim that computers (of this sort) cannot have TH-understanding. Now we can finally get to the matter at hand.

Post #102 makes NO explicit reference to “TH-Understanding”

As simply as possible : “To perceive” is to acquire, process, interpret, select, and organise information as part of a knowledge-base.

It’s still a little fuzzy here. For instance, are you saying a person can “perceive” an intensely bright light without being aware of it through the senses?

Allow me to explain.
“being aware of an intensely bright light through the senses” is simply one possible mechanism for “acquiring, processing and interpreting information” – which (by my definition) is included in "perception".

Please see post #102

Separate post, thus I will post a separate reply.
MF

 

[quantumcarl]

I see! This is very good, I would have to agree with your conclusions here. So you are defining the process of understanding as a strictly personal experience? So the "understanding" of language then would actually be the personal "understanding" of the perception of language? Purely a personal epistemological issue?

Yes, the understanding of a language would not only be the personal understanding of the language but the personal experience of comrehending the language. Comprehension is close to being another compound verb... like the word understanding, only, comprehension describes the ability to "apprehend" a "composition" of data. A personal understanding of the language would be based on personal experiences with the language.

It is rare that I hear someone claiming to "understand a language". The more common declaration of language comprehension is "I speak Yiddish" or "Larry speaks Cantonese" or "Sally knows German".

To say "I understand Yiddish" is a perfect example of the incorrect use of english and represents the misuse and abuse of the word "understand".

The word, "understand", represents the speaker's or writer's position (specifically the position of "standing under") with regard to a topic.

The word "understand" describes that the individual has experienced the phenomenon in question and has developed their own true sense of that phenomenon with the experiencial knowledge they have collected about it. This collection of data is the "process of understanding" or the "path to understanding" a phenomenon. This is why I dispute MF's claim that there are shades of understanding. There is understanding and there is the process of attaining an understanding. Although, I suppose the obviously incorrect use of the word understanding could be construed as "shady".

When two people or nations "reach an understanding" during a dispute, they match their interpretations of events that have transpired between them. They find common threads in their interpretations. These commonalities are only found when the two party's experiences are interpreted similarily by the two partys. There then begins to emerge a sense of truth about certain experiences that both partys have experienced. After much examination and investigation... an understanding (between two parties) is attained by the light of a common, cross-party, interpretation of the phenomenon, or specific components of the phenomenon, in question.

 

[Tournesol]

In the absence of an objective explanation there is no objective way of
testing for consciousness. Of course there is still a subjective way; if
you are conscious, the very fact that you are conscious tells you you are
conscious. Hence Searle puts himself inside the room.

This subjective “test” that you suggest only allows the subject to determine whether “itself” is conscious. It says nothing about the consciousness of anything else.
.

If we want to truly know about the consciousness of anything else, we have to
start with the fact the we know ourselves to be conscious, and find out how
that consciousness is generated. We happen not have the ability ot infer from
subjective to objective test of consciousness in that way at the moment, so we may be
tempted
to use things like the Turing test as a stopgap. Searle's argument is that
we should not take the Turing test as definitive, since there is a conceivable
set of circumstances in which the test is passed but the appropriate
consciousness is not present (by the subjective test).

As I have stated several times, the intelligence of an artificial intelligence
needs to be pinned to human intelligence (albeit not it in a way that makes it
trivially impossible) in order to make the claim of "artificiallity"
intelligible. Otherwise, the computer is just doing something -- something
that might as well be called information-processing,or symbol manipulation.

Imho this is just what the human brain does – information-processing,or symbol manipulation.

So how does that relate to artifical intelligence ? You seem to be saying not
so much that computers are artificial brains as brains are natural computers.

Is "bachelors are unmarried because bachelors are unmarried" viciously
circular too ? Or is it -- as every logician everywhere maintains -- a
necessary, analytical truth ?

The difference between an analytic statement and a synthetic one is that the former are true “by definition”, therefore to claim that something is an “analytical truth” is a non-sequitur.

No, there are analytical falsehoods as well , eg "Bachelors are unmarried".

Analytic statements are essentially uninformative tautologies.

However, whether the statement “consciousness is necessary for understanding” is analytic or synthetic is open to debate. In my world (where I define understanding such that consciousness is not necessary for understanding), it is synthetic.
I guess that Tournesol would claim the statement “all unicorns eat meat” is synthetic, and not analytic?
But if I now declare “I define a unicorn as a carnivorous animal”” then (using your reasoning) I can claim the statement is now analytic, not synthetic.
According to your reasoning, I can now argue “all unicorns eat meat because I define a unicorn as a carnivorous animal”, and this argument is a valid argument?

Whether it is a valid analytical argument depends on whether the definitions it
relies on are conventional or eccentric.

This is precisely what the argument “consciousness requires understanding because I define consciousness as necessary for understanding” boils down to.

That is what it would boil down to if "understanding requires consciousness"
were unconventional, like "unicorns are carnivores", not conventional like
"bachelors are unmarried".

If you understand something , you can report that you know it, explain how you know it. etc.

Not necessarily.

yes, by defintion. That is the difference between understanding, and instinct
intuition, etc. A beaver can buld dams, but it cannot give lectures on civil
engineering.

The ability “to report” requires more than just “understanding Chinese”.

??

That higher-level knowing-how-you-know is consciousness by definition.

I suppose this is your definition of consciousness? Is this an analytic statement again?

You don't seem to have an alternative.

The question is whether syntax is sufficient for semantics.

I’m glad that you brought us back to the Searle CR argument again. Because I see no evidence that the CR does not understand semantics

Well, I have already given you a specific reason; there are words in human
languages which refer specifically to sensory experiences.

Here is a general reason for the under-determination of semantics by syntax:

given the set of sentences.

"all floogles are blints"
"all blints are zimmoids"
"some zimmoids are not blints"

you could answer the question
"are floogles zimmoids ?"
and so on -- without of course knowing
what floogles (etc) are. Moreover, I could supply
a semantic model for the syntax, such as:-

floogle=pigeon
blint=bird
zimmoids=vertebrate

so far, so CR-ish. The internal Operator is using meaningless
symbols such as "floogle", and the external Inquisitor is applying
the semantics above, and getting meaningful results.
But I could go further and supply a second semantic model

floogle=strawberry
blint=fruit
zimmoids=plant

and, in a departure from the CR, supply the second semantics
to the Operator. Now the operator thinks he understands what
the symbols he is manipulating, so does the Inquisitor...but
their interpretations are quite different!

Thus there is a prima facie case that syntax underdetermines
semantics: more than one semantic model can be consitently given to
the same symbols.

Now the strong AI-er could object that the examples are too
simple to be realistic, and if you threw in enough symbols,
you would be able to resolve all ambiguities succesfully.

To counter that the anti-Aier
needs an example of something which could not conceivably be
pinned down that way and that's just where sensory terminology comes
in.

(Too put it another way: we came to the syntax/semantics distinction by
analysing language. If semantics were redundant and derivable from syntax,
why did we ever feel the need for it as a category?)

How else would you do it ? Test for understanding without knowing what
"understanding means". Beg the question in the other direction by

re-defining "understanding" to not require consciousness ?

Are you suggesting the “correct” way to establish whether “understanding requires consciousness” is “by definition”?

I have been consistently suggesting that establishing definitions is completely
different to establishing facts. Defining a word in a certain way does not
demonstrate that anything corresonding to it actaully exists. Hence my frequent
use of unicorns as an example.

The correct way to do it is NOT by definition at all. All this achieves is the equivalent of the ancient Greeks deciding how many teeth in a horse’s mouth “by debate” instead of by experiment.

How can you establish a fact without definitions? How do you tell that the
creature in fron of you is in fact a horse without a definition of "horse" ?

Hypothesis : Understanding requires consciousness
Develop the hypothesis further – what predictions would this hypothesis make that could be tested experimentally?
Then carry out experimental tests of the hypothesis (try to falsify it)

How can you falsify a hypothesis without definitions of the terms in which it
is expressed ?

I am suggesting that no-one can write a definition that conveys the
sensory, experiential quality.

“Experiential quality” is not “understanding”
I do not need the “sensory experiential quality” of red to understand red, any more than I need the “sensory experiential quality” of x-rays to understand x-rays, or the “sensory experiential quality” of flying to understand aerodynamics.

You seem to be saying that
non-experiential knowledge ("red light has a wavelentght of 500nm") *is*
understanding, and all there is to understanding, and experience is
something extraneous that does not belong to understanding at all
(in contradiction to the conclusion of "What Mary Knew").

The conclusion to “What Mary Knew” is disputed.

Indeed, but in what ways, and with what reasonableness ?
If it was a valid response to plonkingly deny that exeriential knowledge
is knowledge at all, why didn't the Jackson's critics do that
instead of coming out with the more complex responses they
did come out with ? can't you see that you are making an extraordinary claim ?

It is perfectly reasonable to suggest that anyone needs normal vision in order to fully understand colour terms in any language.

Perhaps reasonable to you, not to me.

Perhaps you are in the minority. Perhaps you are making an extraordinary claim
with an unshouldered argumentative burden.

Sense-experience is not understanding.

Tu quoque.

It doesn't have any human-style senses at all. Like Wittgenstien's lion, but
more so.

Information and knowledge are required for understanding, not senses.

Aren't senses (at least) channels of information ? Don't different senses
convey different information.

“what it looks like” is sense-experience, it is not understanding.

Tu quoque.

However, I do not need to argue that non-experiential knowledge is not knowledge.

Why not - is this perhaps yet another analytic statement?

It doesn't affect my conclusion.

However, if you can do both you clearly have more understanding than someone
who can only do one or the other or neither.

Its not at all “clear” to me – or perhaps you also “define” understanding as “requiring sense-experience”? Analytic again?

Sigh...it's just a common-sense observation. People who have learned from experience
have more understanding than people who haven't.

the question is irrelevant – because “ability to fly a plane” is not synonymous with “understanding flight”.
Are you saying you only put your trust in the pilot because he “understands”?
If the same plane is now put onto autopilot, would you suddenly want to bail out with a parachute because (in your definition) machines “do not possesses understanding”?

They do not have as much understanding, or planes would be on autopilot all
the time.

They don't know what Mary doesn't know.

We are talking about “understanding”, not simply an experiential quality.
What is it that you think Mary “understands” once she has “experienced seeing red” that she necessarily did NOT understand before she had “experienced seeing red”?

What red looks like. The full meaning of the word "red" (remember, this is
ultimately about semantics).

(remember – by definition Mary already “knows all there is to know about the colour red”, i

No, by stipulation Mary knows all there is to know about red that can be
expressend in physical, 3rd-person, non-experiential terms.

and sense-experience is sense-experience, it is not understanding)

Tu quoque.

I claim that experience is necessary for a *full* understanding of *sensory*
language, and that an entity without sensory exprience therefore lacks full
semantics.

And I claim they are not. The senses are merely “possible conduits” of information.
There is no reason why all of the information required to “understand red”, or to “understand a concept” cannot be encoded directly into the computer (or CR) as part of its initial program.

Yes there is. If no-one can write down a definition of the experiential nature
of "red" -- and you have consistenly failed to do so -- no-one can encode it into a programme.
Now, you could object that the way "red" looks is just the way the visual
system conveys information and is not informatiomn itself; and I could reply
that knowledge about how red looks is still knowledge, even if it isn't
the same knowledge as is conveyed by red as an information-channel.

In principle, no sense-receptors are needed at all. The computer or CR can be totally blind (ie have no sense receptors) but still incorporate all of the information needed in order to understand red, syntactically and semantically. This is the thesis of strong AI, which you seem to dispute.

Yes. No-one knows how to encode all the information. You don't.

If you are going to counter this claim as stated, you need to rise to the
challenge and show how a *verbal* definition of "red" can convey the *experiential*
meaning of "red".

My claim (and that of strong AI) is that it is simply information, and not necessarily direct access to information from sense-receptors, that is required for understanding. Senses in humans are a means of conveying information – but that is all they are. This need not be the case in all possible agents, and is not the case in the CR. If we could “program the human brain” with the same information then it would have the same understanding, in the absence of any sense-receptors.
with respect

You still haven't shown , specifically, how to encode experiential infomation.
Saying "it must be possible because strong AI says it is possible" is , of
course,
circular. The truth of strong AI is what is being disputed, and the
uncommunicability of experiential meaning is one of the means of disputing it.

 

[moving finger]

In the absence of an objective explanation there is no objective way of testing for consciousness. Of course there is still a subjective way; if
you are conscious, the very fact that you are conscious tells you you are
conscious. Hence Searle puts himself inside the room.

This subjective “test” that you suggest only allows the subject to determine whether “itself” is conscious. It says nothing about the consciousness of anything else.

If we want to truly know about the consciousness of anything else, we have to start with the fact the we know ourselves to be conscious, and find out how
that consciousness is generated. We happen not have the ability ot infer from
subjective to objective test of consciousness in that way at the moment, so we may be
tempted to use things like the Turing test as a stopgap. Searle's argument is that
we should not take the Turing test as definitive, since there is a conceivable
set of circumstances in which the test is passed but the appropriate
consciousness is not present (by the subjective test).

How does MF know whether the agent Tournesol “understands” English? The only way MF has of determining whether the agent Tournesol understands English or not is to put it to the test – in fact the Turing test - to ask it various questions designed to “test its understanding of English”. If the agent Tournesol passes the test then I conclude that the agent understands English.
Why should it be any different for a machine?
I am not suggesting that Turing’s test is definitive. But in the absence of any other test it is the best we have (and certainly imho better than “defining” our way out of the problem). I’m sure we would all love to see a better test, if you can suggest one.
If you reject the Turing test as a test of machine understanding, then why should I believe that any human agent truly understands English?

So how does that relate to artifical intelligence ? You seem to be saying not so much that computers are artificial brains as brains are natural computers.

Both computers and human brains process information and manipulate symbols. If you wish to conclude from this either that computers are artificial brains or that brains are natural computers that is up to you.

Whether it is a valid analytical argument depends on whether the definitions it relies on are conventional or eccentric.

Conventional by whose definition? Tournesol’s?
In rational debate we use words as tools – so long as we clearly define what we mean by the tools we use then we may use whatever tools we wish.

That is what it would boil down to if "understanding requires consciousness" were unconventional

Unconventional by whose definition? Tournesol’s?
In rational debate we use words as tools – so long as we clearly define what we mean by the tools we use then we may use whatever tools we wish.

If you understand something , you can report that you know it, explain how you know it. etc.

Not necessarily.

yes, by defintion. That is the difference between understanding, and instinct intuition, etc. A beaver can buld dams, but it cannot give lectures on civil
engineering.

I cannot report that I know anything if my “means of reporting” has been removed.
A beaver might in principle “understand” civil engineering, but it can’t give lectures if it cannot speak.

You don't seem to have an alternative.

Consciousness imho is the internal representation and manipulation of a “self model” within an information-processing agent, such that the agent can ask rational questions “of itself”, for example “what do I know?”, “how do I know”, “do I know that I know?”, etc etc. The ability of an agent to do this is NOT necessary for understanding per se, although it is probably the case that a certain level of understanding is necessary for any reasonably complex consciousness to exist (hence one reason why understanding and consciousness are asociated in homo sapiens).

The question is whether syntax is sufficient for semantics.

I’m glad that you brought us back to the Searle CR argument again. Because I see no evidence that the CR does not understand semantics

Well, I have already given you a specific reason; there are words in human languages which refer specifically to sensory experiences.

Why do you consider this is evidence that the CR does not understand semantics? Sensory experiences are merely conduits for information transfer, they do not endow understanding per se, much less semantic understanding.

Here is a general reason for the under-determination of semantics by syntax:
given the set of sentences.
"all floogles are blints"
"all blints are zimmoids"
"some zimmoids are not blints"
you could answer the question
"are floogles zimmoids ?"
and so on -- without of course knowing
what floogles (etc) are. Moreover, I could supply
a semantic model for the syntax, such as:-
floogle=pigeon
blint=bird
zimmoids=vertebrate
so far, so CR-ish.

“CR-ish” by whose definition? Yours?

The internal Operator is using meaningless
symbols such as "floogle", and the external Inquisitor is applying
the semantics above, and getting meaningful results.
But I could go further and supply a second semantic model
floogle=strawberry
blint=fruit
zimmoids=plant
and, in a departure from the CR,

“departure from the CR” by whose definition? Yours?

supply the second semantics
to the Operator. Now the operator thinks he understands what
the symbols he is manipulating, so does the Inquisitor...but
their interpretations are quite different!

This type of misunderstanding can happen between two human agents. There is nothing special about the CR in this context. This argument does not show that the CR does not understand semantics, it shows only that there may be differences between the semantics of two different agents.

Thus there is a prima facie case that syntax underdetermines
semantics: more than one semantic model can be consitently given to
the same symbols.

This type of misunderstanding can happen between two human agents. There is nothing special about the CR in this context. This argument does not show that the CR does not understand semantics, it shows only that there may be differences between the semantic understanding of two different agents.

Now the strong AI-er could object that the examples are too
simple to be realistic, and if you threw in enough symbols,
you would be able to resolve all ambiguities succesfully.

See above.

To counter that the anti-Aier
needs an example of something which could not conceivably be
pinned down that way and that's just where sensory terminology comes
in.
(Too put it another way: we came to the syntax/semantics distinction by
analysing language. If semantics were redundant and derivable from syntax,
why did we ever feel the need for it as a category?)

Who has suggested that “semantics is redundant”? Only Tournesol.
Using your logic, one might equally ask why do we have the separate concepts of “programmable computer” and “pocket calculator” – both are in fact “calculating machines” therefore why not just call them both “calculating machines” and be done with it.

I have been consistently suggesting that establishing definitions is completely different to establishing facts. Defining a word in a certain way does not
demonstrate that anything corresonding to it actaully exists.

Excellent! Therefore we can finally dispense with this stupid idea that “understanding requires consciousness because it is defined that way”

How can you establish a fact without definitions? How do you tell that the creature in fron of you is in fact a horse without a definition of "horse" ?

Ask yourself “what are the essential qualities of understanding that allow me to say “this agent understands”” – avoid prejudicial definitions and and avoid anthropocentrism

How can you falsify a hypothesis without definitions of the terms in which it is expressed ?

Ask yourself “what are the essential qualities of understanding that allow me to say “this agent understands”” – avoid prejudicial definitions and and avoid anthropocentrism

I am suggesting that no-one can write a definition that conveys the
sensory, experiential quality.

Experiential qualities are agent-dependent (ie subjective). “Tournesol’s experiential quality of seeing red” is peculiar to Tournesol – subjective - it is meaningless to any other agent. This does not mean that “writing the definition” is impossible, it just means that it is a subjective definition, hence not easily accessible to other agents

The conclusion to “What Mary Knew” is disputed.

Indeed, but in what ways, and with what reasonableness ?
If it was a valid response to plonkingly deny that exeriential knowledge
is knowledge at all, why didn't the Jackson's critics do that
instead of coming out with the more complex responses they
did come out with ? can't you see that you are making an extraordinary claim ?

You seem plonkingly confused. I have denied that experiential knowledge is synonymous with understanding, I have NOT denied that experiential knowledge is knowledge

It is perfectly reasonable to suggest that anyone needs normal vision in order to fully understand colour terms in any language.

Perhaps reasonable to you, not to me.

Perhaps you are in the minority. Perhaps you are making an extraordinary claim with an unshouldered argumentative burden.

Your assertion assumes that vision is required for understanding. Vision provides experiential information, not understanding. I understand the terms “X-ray” and “ultra-violet” and “infra-red” and “microwave” even though I possesses no experiential information associated with these terms. What makes you think I need “experiential information” to understand the terms “red” and “green”? The onus is on you to show why the experiential information is indeed necessary for understanding red and green, but not for x-rays or ultra-violet rays..

It doesn't have any human-style senses at all. Like Wittgenstien's lion, but more so.

Information and knowledge are required for understanding, not senses.

Aren't senses (at least) channels of information ? Don't different senses convey different information.

Yes. But information per se is not understanding. See above argument re x-rays etc.

“what it looks like” is sense-experience, it is not understanding.

Tu quoque.

Yup. Can you show otherwise?

However, I do not need to argue that non-experiential knowledge is not knowledge.

Why not - is this perhaps yet another analytic statement?

It doesn't affect my conclusion.

It affects whether your conclusion is simply “your opinion” or not

However, if you can do both you clearly have more understanding than someone who can only do one or the other or neither.

Its not at all “clear” to me – or perhaps you also “define” understanding as “requiring sense-experience”? Analytic again?

Sigh...it's just a common-sense observation. People who have learned from experience have more understanding than people who haven't.

Sigh…..that is a very anthropocentric viewpoint. Humans acquire most of their information from their senses in the form of reading, listening etc – the same information could be programmed directly into a machine. The fact that humans are so dependent on sense-receptors for their information gathering does not lead to the conclusion that understanding is impossible in the absence of sense-receptors in all possible agents.

If the same plane is now put onto autopilot, would you suddenly want to bail out with a parachute because (in your definition) machines “do not possesses understanding”?

They do not have as much understanding, or planes would be on autopilot all the time.

It makes the point that “ability to fly a plane” is not synonymous with “understanding flight”

What is it that you think Mary “understands” once she has “experienced seeing red” that she necessarily did NOT understand before she had “experienced seeing red”?

What red looks like.

“what red looks like” is not understanding – it is simply “subjective experiential information”
“What red looks like” to Mary is not necessarily the same as “what red looks like” to Tournesol

The full meaning of the word "red" (remember, this is ultimately about semantics).

Your argument continues to betray a peculiar anthropocentic perspective. What makes you think that the experiential quality of “red” is the same to you as it is to me? If the experiential qualities are not the same between two agents, then why should it then matter (in terms of understanding semantics) if the experiential quality of “red” is in fact totally absent in one of the agents? I can understand “semantically” just what is meant by the term red without ever “experiencing seeing red”, just as I can understand sematically just what is meant by the term “x-rays” without ever “experiencing seeing x-rays”.

No, by stipulation Mary knows all there is to know about red that can be expressend in physical, 3rd-person, non-experiential terms.

As I have oft repeated, sense-experience is sense-experience, it is not understanding.
Do I fail to understand what is meant (semantically) by the term “x-ray” because I have never seen x-rays?
.

I claim that experience is necessary for a *full* understanding of *sensory* language, and that an entity without sensory exprience therefore lacks full
semantics.

And I claim they are not. The senses are merely “possible conduits” of information.
There is no reason why all of the information required to “understand red”, or to “understand a concept” cannot be encoded directly into the computer (or CR) as part of its initial program.

Yes there is. If no-one can write down a definition of the experiential nature of "red" -- and you have consistenly failed to do so -- no-one can encode it into a programme.

Now (with respect) you are being silly. Nobody can write down a universal “definition of the experiential nature of red" because it is a purely subjective experience. There is a pattern of information in Tournesol’s brain which corresponds to “Tournesol seeing red”, but that pattern means absolutely nothing to any other agent.

Now, you could object that the way "red" looks is just the way the visual system conveys information and is not informatiomn itself; and I could reply
that knowledge about how red looks is still knowledge, even if it isn't
the same knowledge as is conveyed by red as an information-channel.

Again you are missing the point. Information is not synonymous with understanding (if it was then the AI case would be much easier to make!)

In principle, no sense-receptors are needed at all. The computer or CR can be totally blind (ie have no sense receptors) but still incorporate all of the information needed in order to understand red, syntactically and semantically. This is the thesis of strong AI, which you seem to dispute.

Yes. No-one knows how to encode all the information. You don't.

Oh really Tournesol. Whether “MF knows know how to do it or not” is irrelevant.

If you are going to counter this claim as stated, you need to rise to the challenge and show how a *verbal* definition of "red" can convey the *experiential*
meaning of "red".

Nobody can write down a universal “definition of the experiential nature of red" because it is a subjective experience. There is a pattern of information in Tournesol’s brain which corresponds to “Tournesol seeing red”, but that pattern means nothing to any other agent.

You still haven't shown , specifically, how to encode experiential infomation.

I don’t see why you seem to think it’s such a problem.
Information is information.
The interesting aspect of experiential information is that it has “meaning” only to the agent to which it relates. In other words the information contained in the experiential state of “Tournesol seeing red” only means something to the agent “Tournesol”, the same information means nothing (indeed does not exist) to any other agent.
MF

 

[Tisthammerw]

We seem to agree that "for two agents to agree on whether a statement is analytic or not" requires that the agents first agree the definitions of terms used in the statement.

Sort of. Note what I've been saying for a long time now: I've been claiming that “understanding requires consciousness” in the sense that I mean when I use the terms. I have explicitly stated (many times) that the statement is not necessarily analytic in all definitions of the terms (yours for instance).

This much seems obvious. We do not agree on the definition of understanding, therefore we do not agree the statement “understanding requires consciousness” is analytic.

See above. When calling it analytic, I have been specifically referring to my own definitions. I don’t know why you have insisted on ignoring this.

Let's "trim the fat" as you suggested.

I suggest the following :

“TH-Understanding requires consciousness” is an analytic statement
“MF-Understanding does not require consciousness” is also an analytic statement.
But "Understanding requires consciousness" is a synthetic statement, because we do not agree on the definition of "understanding".

Do you agree?

This imho sums it up.

Yes and no. That “TH-understanding requires consciousness” is an analytic statement is of course what I’ve been claiming for quite some time now.

The last part, “’Understanding requires consciousness’ is a synthetic statement” is not quite true methinks, because it does not seem to be the sort of thing that can be determined by observation. A better statement perhaps would be “’ Understanding requires consciousness’ is analytic depending on how the terms are defined; since the statement is not necessarily analytic for all people’s definitions of the terms.”

Please read carefully this time. Do we agree that computers cannot understand in the sense that I mean when I use the term? That (given the model of a complex set of instructions manipulating input etc.) computers cannot perceive the meaning of words, and they cannot be aware of what the words mean? Simply saying, “I don't mean the same thing you do when I say ‘understanding’” doesn't really answer my question at all. So please answer it.

Please read my complete answer very carefully this time. I am here replying to your precise question as phrased above. You have not shown that all computer agents are necessarily non-conscious. Therefore I do not agree.

Since you are replying to my precise question as phrased above, please see post #102 where I provide a reduction ad absurdum (e.g. let “program X” equal any program that could be considered the “right” program…).

Note: I do tend to read your complete answers, what makes you think I have not done so in this case (whatever case you are insinuating)? If anything, I should make that charge against you: since you seem to have ignored some points I’ve been repeating for quite some time (e.g. that my claim “understanding requires consciousness” is analytic for my definitions, not necessarily for all others).

But you have not shown that “TH-understanding requires consciousness” is not an analytic statement, whereas I have shown the opposite.

I have never denied that the statement “TH-Understanding requires consciousness” is analytic, you again are making mistakes in your reading and comprehension of these posts. Please read more carefully.

I SHOULD SAY THE SAME FOR YOU!

Sorry for that outburst. Let me explain. I have (rather explicitly) been referring to my definitions when I claim that “understanding requires consciousness” is an analytic statement, also explicitly stating that it is analytic using my definitions and not necessarily everyone else’s. Note the context of the quote:

It’s quite simple. If the premises are not true, the conclusion is not necessarily true, and the argument is then unsound.

Ah, so you “disagree” with the premise in that you believe it to be false. But you have not shown that “TH-understanding requires consciousness” is not an analytic statement, whereas I have shown the opposite.

The “premise” in this case is “understanding requires consciousness” but since this claim of mine rather explicitly refers to my definition of the terms (and not necessarily everybody else’s) you can understand my response. Please read my complete responses more carefully.

Please read carefully this time. Do we agree that computers cannot understand in the sense that I mean when I use the term? That (given the model of a complex set of instructions manipulating input etc.) computers cannot perceive the meaning of words, and they cannot be aware of what the words mean?

Please read my complete answer very carefully. Let me help you out here. I am here replying to your precise question as phrased above. By “understand in the sense that I mean when I use the term “ I assume you mean “TH-Understanding”.
Your question is thus “Do you agree that computers cannot TH-Understand?”.
Now TH-Understanding is defined such that it requires consciousness.
But you have not shown that all computer agents are necessarily not conscious, therefore I do not see how the question can be answered.

My method of attack isn’t showing that computers can’t possesses consciousness, merely that they do not possesses what you call “TH-understanding.” So why my adamant support of the analytic statement “understanding requires consciousness” (again, using my definitions)? For some rebuttals (e.g. the systems reply) that claim the system can understand, I can make responses like, “Does the combination of the book, the paper, and the man somehow magically create a separate consciousness that understands Chinese? That isn’t plausible.” So the analytic statement can be useful for my rejoinders.

So you don’t agree that computers (given the model I described) cannot have TH-understanding? Well then, please look at post #102 of this thread where I justify my claim that computers (of this sort) cannot have TH-understanding. Now we can finally get to the matter at hand.

Post #102 makes NO explicit reference to “TH-Understanding”

Please read my complete post very carefully this time. Post #102 of this thread very explicitly defines the definition of understanding that I use (the very same definition you have called “TH-understanding”). Remember, the term “TH-understanding” is a word you defined, not me.

Allow me to explain.
“being aware of an intensely bright light through the senses” is simply one possible mechanism for “acquiring, processing and interpreting information” – which (by my definition) is included in "perception".

I suppose it depends what you mean by “acquiring, processing…” and all that. Under your definition, would a computer that acquired visual data (via a camera) store it in its databanks, process it by circling any blue squares in the picture be considered “perceiving” even though the process is automated and does not include consciousness (as I have defined the term)? If the answer is “yes” then I think I understand your definition.

 

[moving finger]

When calling it analytic, I have been specifically referring to my own definitions. I don’t know why you have insisted on ignoring this.

I have been ignoring nothing – I have been responding literally to the statement referred to. The statement “understanding requires consciousness” is a stand-alone statement. If you wish to call this statement analytic then by the rules of logic it MUST stand or fall on its own (it does not magically become analytic because you add some qualifying remarks outside of the statement)..
Imho what you meant to say (should have said) is “understanding as defined by Tisthammerw requires consciousness” is an analytic statement (then I would of course have agreed)

That “TH-understanding requires consciousness” is an analytic statement is of course what I’ve been claiming for quite some time now.

With respect, this is incorrect. You have been claiming (until very recently) that "understanding requires consciousness” is an analytic statement. I hope you can see and understand the difference in the statements “TH-Understanding requires consciousness” and “understanding requires consciousness”? They are NOT the same.

The last part, “’Understanding requires consciousness’ is a synthetic statement” is not quite true methinks, because it does not seem to be the sort of thing that can be determined by observation.

We may not yet be able to agree on a “test for understanding”, but that does not mean that such a test is impossible.

A better statement perhaps would be “’ Understanding requires consciousness’ is analytic depending on how the terms are defined; since the statement is not necessarily analytic for all people’s definitions of the terms.”

If it is “not analytic” for my definition of terms then it is synthetic for me. Why should I accept that it is analytic just because you choose to define understanding differently?

Since you are replying to my precise question as phrased above, please see post #102 where I provide a reduction ad absurdum (e.g. let “program X” equal any program that could be considered the “right” program…).

OK, I will respond to post #102 separately (when I get around to it)

Note: I do tend to read your complete answers, what makes you think I have not done so in this case (whatever case you are insinuating)?

Then I must assume that you are misreading or misunderstanding?

If anything, I should make that charge against you: since you seem to have ignored some points I’ve been repeating for quite some time (e.g. that my claim “understanding requires consciousness” is analytic for my definitions, not necessarily for all others).

Like you, I do read your posts, but the reason I do not agree with you is simply because “I do not agree with you”. As I have pointed out above, we may not yet be able to agree on a “test for understanding”, but that does not mean that such a test is impossible. If a statement is “not analytic” for my definition of terms then it is synthetic for me. Why should I accept that it is analytic just because you choose to define understanding differently?

But you have not shown that “TH-understanding requires consciousness” is not an analytic statement, whereas I have shown the opposite.

I have never denied that the statement “TH-Understanding requires consciousness” is analytic, you again are making mistakes in your reading and comprehension of these posts. Please read more carefully.

I SHOULD SAY THE SAME FOR YOU!
Sorry for that outburst.

That’s OK. I can get frustrated at times too when it seems that people are not understanding what I am saying.

The “premise” in this case is “understanding requires consciousness” but since this claim of mine rather explicitly refers to my definition of the terms (and not necessarily everybody else’s) you can understand my response. Please read my complete responses more carefully.

I am as far as I can be rigorous and methodical in my interpretation of logic and reasoning. If you assert that the statement “understanding requires consciousness” is analytic then I take this assertion at face value – and I disagree.
Imho what you meant to say (should have said) is “understanding as defined by Tisthammerw requires consciousness” is an analytic statement (then I would of course have agreed)

My method of attack isn’t showing that computers can’t possesses consciousness, merely that they do not possesses what you call “TH-understanding.”

How have you shown this?
IF we suppose that all possible computers are not conscious THEN it follows that no computer can possesses TH-Understanding. But you have not shown that all possible computers are not conscious.

“Does the combination of the book, the paper, and the man somehow magically create a separate consciousness that understands Chinese? That isn’t plausible.” So the analytic statement can be useful for my rejoinders.

Why should it need to be conscious? MF-Understanding does not require consciousness in order to enable the CR to understand Chinese.

Please read my complete post very carefully this time. Post #102 of this thread very explicitly defines the definition of understanding that I use (the very same definition you have called “TH-understanding”). Remember, the term “TH-understanding” is a word you defined, not me.

I suggested TH-Understanding as a way to help our understanding of understanding. If you think it does not help then by all means offer a better solution.
If you wish to re-phrase your argument in terms of “TH-Understanding” then I will reply to it in that context. If you insist instead on using “Understanding” (the definition of which we do not agree) then I will reply in that context.

I suppose it depends what you mean by “acquiring, processing…” and all that. Under your definition, would a computer that acquired visual data (via a camera) store it in its databanks, process it by circling any blue squares in the picture be considered “perceiving” even though the process is automated and does not include consciousness (as I have defined the term)? If the answer is “yes” then I think I understand your definition.

Firstly, if you read my entire post #91 of this thread (which I know you have done, because you have just told me that you DO read all my posts carefully) then you will see that “after cogitation” I refined my idea of “what kind of perception is required” for understanding. The only part of perception necessary for understanding is the kind of introspective perception of the kind “I perceive the truth of statement X”. The sense-dependent type of perception which most humans think of when “perceiving” is simply a means of information transfer and is NOT a fundamental part of understanding in itself.

Actually, having cogitated on this issue for a little longer, I do not see that "perception" (ie the processing of data received from external sense-receptors) is a necessary part of understanding per se. I can imagine a completely self-contained agent which "understands Chinese", but has no sense-receptors at all - hence it couild not "perceive", and yet could still claim to understand Chinese. Therefore on reflection I now delete the requirement "to perceive" from my list of "necessary items" for understanding.
(on the other hand, there are other possible meanings to "perceive", for example "to perceive the truth of something, such as a statement" - an agent which understands is able to "perceive the truth of" things, therefore it necessarily perceives in this sense of the word)

also with respect, you have not shown that it is impossible for all computers to possesses consciousness, therefore your question does not make sense to me (it assumes that all possible computers are necessarily not conscious).
MF