On 8/24/2010 7:10 PM, Pat Hayes wrote:
> The basic question is, where do the meanings come from? (01)
Non Mind consciousness, meaning without consciousness (02)
v. problem of self reference and bootstrap, (03)
If I recall correctly, you disagree with for minds meaning comes from
associating a predicate with a subject , (04)
We can also fail to understand meaning (05)
for machines meaning come from us. (06)
does this require mind? (07)
When I say experience I mean more than perceiving external stimuli.
Though that's the most obvious, we'd probably all agree, we experience
meaning when we dream. Experience also includes our subconscious and
collective unconscious. Each of these cases includes mind, (08)
avoid soul, hofstader (09)
mind as unit of reference, paradox (010)
When I say for machines they come from us. (011)
chalmers hard problem (012)
experience without meaning (013)
subject, predicate (014)
[[]] (015)
> That is, the theories of meaning appeal to the notion of a
> mind as part of the account of meaning. (016)
And I have not been able to read Strange Loop yet, but this (017)
http://tal.forum2.org/hofstadter_interview (018)
> The pithiest phrase is Searle's
> "original intentionality", a basic property of human minds which
> accounts for meaningfulness but is not itself reducible (except possibly
> to biology in some future extension of biological and psychological
> science.) Original intentionality plays the same kind of role in
> semiotic theory, in this view, that mass or electromagnetism play in
> physics: a basic 'force' to which other phenomena can be reduced but
> which itself has to be simply accepted as one of the building blocks of
> the fundamental theory.
>
> But now turn to modern cognitive science (CS), which is the only part of
> science that can claim to have even modest success at accounting for the
> cognitive functions which exhibit intentionality. CS treats the human
> mind as essentially dynamic information processing in the brain, viewed
> (at a suitably high level of abstraction) as a kind of biological
> computer. Not a Von Neumann machine, to be sure, but still an
> information processor which operates upon internal representations in
> some way. Now, on such an account of intentionality, the mind itself is
> made up of signs. Where do these signs get their meaning from? If we
> turn to the triangular tradition, we need another mind to provide the
> meaningfulness of these internal signs, and we are immediately in a
> vicious regress involving nested homunculi. Aristotle through Searle
> appeal to a mind to explain meaningfulness of signs: CS uses meaningful
> signs to explain how the mind works. Their explanatory arrows go in
> reverse directions, and if we use them both, they form a loop. So if CS
> is even sketchily right - and I repeat, no other account of mentality
> comes anywhere close to being adequate - then something other than the
> traditional triangular accounts of meaning must be used to account for
> how the internal signs - the mental representations which constitute the
> mind's inner ontology, the machinery of thought - get their meaning, if
> indeed they have meaning. There is no other mind to appeal to. (019)
In the very wordy Evolution, Error and Intentionality, Dennet suggests
an alternative to (020)
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/evolerr.htm (021)
Reading this paper made me truly appreciate my time recently reading
symbolic notations. (022)
> I don't know how to resolve this problem. For myself, it amounts for me
> to a refutation of the traditional views of meaning, or at any rate a
> reduction of them to triviality. So, sorry, but Aristotle and Pierce and
> Searle and a whole lot of other very distinguished minds were all wrong.
> Searle obviously thought that it was a refutation of modern cognitive
> science (I use the past tense as I havn't spoken with him on this topic
> for a long time.) Either way, it is a serious theoretical problem for
> folk in our profession who are busily using both the formal techniques
> and the ideas of CS while relying upon the traditional triangular view
> of meaning and intentionality. (023)
One value of the meaning triangle is in differentiating object,
representation and concept. (024)
I have come to appreciate how (025)
Benjamin Pierce defines meaning in terms of denotational, operational
and axiomatic semantics. John Reynolds discusses both internal
(non-typed) and external (typed) semantics. In fact, Reynolds introduces
the notation [[]] to designate meaning as (026)
My experience with Haskell has (027)
Here's an example of (028)
[[]] (029)
Value of signs (030)
self referential problem (031)
And your old friend Rob Burstall, suggests (032)
David Chalmers, hard problem (033)
I still find Alan Watts' view authentic and compelling. (034)
can use to explain, web denotational semantics, (035)
The URI your browser de-referenced to render this page is not me. (036)
>
> Pat Hayes (037)
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