(October 21, 2013 at 9:56 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: You must have the first before you can have the second.
Not necessarily. Herein lies the idea of inherent significance you Christians love so much.
(October 21, 2013 at 9:56 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: You have confused data processing with the assignment of meaning. The first is the manipulation of symbols. The second is interpreting the significance of those symbols. A machine process can start with one set of symbols and follow rules to produce a second. It can do so without any understanding of what the symbols mean. Understanding the significance of the symbols is another thing altogether. The thought problem that illustrates your mistake is Searle’s “Chinese Room”.
We've been through that room before - and the conclusion there was that the room proves nothing. What you call "interpreting the significance of those symbols" is simply another form of manipulation and data-processing and there is no reason why a machine would not be capable of this.