Deliberate contextual vocabulary acquisition (CVA) is a reader’s ability to figure out a (not the) meaning for an unknown word from its “context”, without external sources of help such as dictionaries or people. The appropriate context for such CVA is the “belief-revised integration” of the reader’s prior knowledge with the reader’s “internalization” of the text. We discuss unwarranted assumptions behind some classic objections to CVA, and present and defend a computational theory of CVA that we have adapted to a new (...) classroom curriculum designed to help students use CVA to improve their reading comprehension. (shrink)

In this reply to James H. Fetzer’s “Minds and Machines: Limits to Simulations of Thought and Action”, I argue that computationalism should not be the view that (human) cognition is computation, but that it should be the view that cognition (simpliciter) is computable. It follows that computationalism can be true even if (human) cognition is not the result of computations in the brain. I also argue that, if semiotic systems are systems that interpret signs, then both humans and computers are (...) semiotic systems. Finally, I suggest that minds can be considered as virtual machines implemented in certain semiotic systems, primarily the brain, but also AI computers. In doing so, I take issue with Fetzer’s arguments to the contrary. (shrink)

Contextual vocabulary acquisition (CVA) is the deliberate acquisition of a meaning for a word in a text by reasoning from context, where “context” includes: (1) the reader’s “internalization” of the surrounding text, i.e., the reader’s “mental model” of the word’s “textual context” (hereafter, “co-text” [3]) integrated with (2) the reader’s prior knowledge (PK), but it excludes (3) external sources such as dictionaries or people. CVA is what you do when you come across an unfamiliar word in your reading, realize that (...) you don’t know what it means, decide that you need to know what it means in order to understand the passage, but there is no one around to ask, and it is not in the dictionary (or you are too lazy to look it up). In such a case, you can try to figure out its meaning “from context”, i.e., from clues in the co-text together with your prior knowledge. Our computational theory of CVA—implemented in a the SNePS knowledge representation and reasoning system [28]—begins with a stored knowledge base containing SNePS representations of relevant PK, inputs SNePS representations of a passage containing an unfamiliar word, and draws inferences from these two (integrated) information sources. When asked to define the word, definition algorithms deductively search the resulting network for information of the sort that might be found in a dictionary definition, outputting a definition frame whose slots are the kinds of features that a definition might contain (e.g., class membership, properties, actions, spatio-temporal information, etc.) and whose slot-fillers contain information gleaned from the network [6–8,20,23,24]. We are investigating ways to make our system more robust, to embed it in a naturallanguage-processing system, and to incorporate morphological information. Our research group, including reading educators, is also applying our methods to the develop-. (shrink)

A computer can come to understand natural language the same way Helen Keller did: by using “syntactic semantics”—a theory of how syntax can suffice for semantics, i.e., how semantics for natural language can be provided by means of computational symbol manipulation. This essay considers real-life approximations of Chinese Rooms, focusing on Helen Keller’s experiences growing up deaf and blind, locked in a sort of Chinese Room yet learning how to communicate with the outside world. Using the SNePS computational knowledge-representation system, (...) the essay analyzes Keller’s belief that learning that “everything has a name” was the key to her success, enabling her to “partition” her mental concepts into mental representations of: words, objects, and the naming relations between them. It next looks at Herbert Terrace’s theory of naming, which is akin to Keller’s, and which only humans are supposed to be capable of. The essay suggests that computers at least, and perhaps non-human primates, are also capable of this kind of naming. (shrink)

Ford’s Helen Keller Was Never in a Chinese Room claims that my argument in How Helen Keller Used Syntactic Semantics to Escape from a Chinese Room fails because Searle and I use the terms ‘syntax’ and ‘semantics’ differently, hence are at cross purposes. Ford has misunderstood me; this reply clarifies my theory.

Syntactic semantics is a holistic, conceptual-role-semantic theory of how computers can think. But Fodor and Lepore have mounted a sustained attack on holistic semantic theories. However, their major problem with holism (that, if holism is true, then no two people can understand each other) can be fixed by means of negotiating meanings. Syntactic semantics and Fodor and Lepore’s objections to holism are outlined; the nature of communication, miscommunication, and negotiation is discussed; Bruner’s ideas about the negotiation of meaning are explored; (...) and some observations on a problem for knowledge representation in AI raised by Winston are presented. (shrink)

Turner argues that computer programs must have purposes, that implementation is not a kind of semantics, and that computers might need to understand what they do. I respectfully disagree: Computer programs need not have purposes, implementation is a kind of semantic interpretation, and neither human computers nor computing machines need to understand what they do.

This paper describes the SNePS knowledge-representation and reasoning system. SNePS is an intensional, propositional, semantic-network processing system used for research in AI. We look at how predication is represented in such a system when it is used for cognitive modeling and natural-language understanding and generation. In particular, we discuss issues in the representation of fictional entities and the representation of propositions from fiction, using SNePS. We briefly survey four philosophical ontological theories of fiction and sketch an epistemological theory of fiction (...) using a story operator and rules for allowing propositions to migrate into and out of story spaces. (shrink)

This essay continues my investigation of `syntactic semantics': the theory that, pace Searle's Chinese-Room Argument, syntax does suffice for semantics (in particular, for the semantics needed for a computational cognitive theory of natural-language understanding). Here, I argue that syntactic semantics (which is internal and first-person) is what has been called a conceptual-role semantics: The meaning of any expression is the role that it plays in the complete system of expressions. Such a `narrow', conceptual-role semantics is the appropriate sort of semantics (...) to account (from an `internal', or first-person perspective) for how a cognitive agent understands language. Some have argued for the primacy of external, or `wide', semantics, while others have argued for a two-factor analysis. But, although two factors can be specified–-one internal and first-person, the other only specifiable in an external, third-person way–-only the internal, first-person one is needed for understanding how someone understands. A truth-conditional semantics can still be provided, but only from a third-person perspective. (shrink)

I advocate a theory of syntactic semantics as a way of understanding how computers can think (and how the Chinese-Room-Argument objection to the Turing Test can be overcome): (1) Semantics, considered as the study of relations between symbols and meanings, can be turned into syntax – a study of relations among symbols (including meanings) – and hence syntax (i.e., symbol manipulation) can suffice for the semantical enterprise (contra Searle). (2) Semantics, considered as the process of understanding one domain (by modeling (...) it) in terms of another, can be viewed recursively: The base case of semantic understanding –understanding a domain in terms of itself – is syntactic understanding. (3) An internal (or narrow ), first-person point of view makes an external (or wide ), third-person point of view otiose for purposes of understanding cognition. (shrink)

A response to a recent critique by Cem Bozşahin of the theory of syntactic semantics as it applies to Helen Keller, and some applications of the theory to the philosophy of computer science.

John Searle’s Chinese room argument is a celebrated thought experiment designed to refute the hypothesis, popular among artificial intelligence scientists and philosophers of mind, that “the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind”. Since its publication in 1980, the CRA has evoked an enormous amount of debate about its implications for machine intelligence, the functionalist philosophy of mind, theories of consciousness, etc. Although the general consensus among commentators is that the CRA is flawed, and not withstanding the popularity of the (...) systems reply in some quarters, there is remarkably little agreement on exactly how and why it is flawed. A newcomer to the controversy could be forgiven for thinking that the bewildering collection of diverse replies to Searle betrays a tendency to unprincipled, ad hoc argumentation and, thereby, a weakness in the opposition’s case. In this paper, treating the CRA as a prototypical example of a ‘destructive’ thought experiment, I attempt to set it in a logical framework, which allows us to systematise and classify the various objections. Since thought experiments are always posed in narrative form, formal logic by itself cannot fully capture the controversy. On the contrary, much also hinges on how one translates between the informal everyday language in which the CRA was initially framed and formal logic and, in particular, on the specific conception of possibility that one reads into the logical formalism. (shrink)

This is a draft of the written version of comments on a paper by David Cole, presented orally at the American Philosophical Association Central Division meeting in New Orleans, 27 April 1990. Following the written comments are 2 appendices: One contains a letter to Cole updating these comments. The other is the handout from the oral presentation.

Discussion of Searle's case against strong AI has usually focused upon his Chinese Room thought-experiment. In this paper, however, I expound and then try to refute what I call his abstract argument against strong AI, an argument which turns upon quite general considerations concerning programs, syntax, and semantics, and which seems not to depend on intuitions about the Chinese Room. I claim that this argument fails, since it assumes one particular account of what a program is. I suggest an alternative (...) account which, however, cannot play a role in a Searle-type argument, and argue that Searle gives no good reason for favoring his account, which allows the abstract argument to work, over the alternative, which doesn't. This response to Searle's abstract argument also, incidentally, enables the Robot Reply to the Chinese Room to defend itself against objections Searle makes to it. (shrink)

The author defends John R. Searle's Chinese Room argument against a particular objection made by William J. Rapaport called the Korean Room. Foundational issues such as the relationship of strong AI to human mentality and the adequacy of the Turing Test are discussed. Through undertaking a Gedankenexperiment similar to Searle's but which meets new specifications given by Rapaport for an AI system, the author argues that Rapaport's objection to Searle does not stand and that Rapaport's arguments seem convincing only because (...) they assume the foundations of strong AI at the outset. (shrink)

John R. Searle's problem of the Chinese Room poses an important philosophical challenge to the foundations of strong artificial intelligence, and functionalist, cognitivist, and computationalist theories of mind. Searle has recently responded to three categories of criticisms of the Chinese Room and the consequences he attempts to conclude from it, redescribing the essential features of the problem, and offering new arguments about the syntax-semantics gap it is intended to demonstrate. Despite Searle's defense, the Chinese Room remains ineffective as a counterexample, (...) and poses no real threat to artificial intelligence or mechanist philosophy of mind. The thesis that intentionality is a primitive irreducible relation exemplified by biological phenomena is preferred in opposition to Searle's contrary claim that intentionality is a biological phenomenon exhibiting abstract properties. (shrink)

Considerations of personal identity bear on John Searle's Chinese Room argument, and on the opposed position that a computer itself could really understand a natural language. In this paper I develop the notion of a virtual person, modelled on the concept of virtual machines familiar in computer science. I show how Searle's argument, and J. Maloney's attempt to defend it, fail. I conclude that Searle is correct in holding that no digital machine could understand language, but wrong in holding that (...) artificial minds are impossible: minds and persons are not the same as the machines, biological or electronic, that realize them. (shrink)

Disertační práce se zabývá problematikou připisování myšlení jiným entitám, a to pomocí imitační hry navržené v roce 1950 britským filosofem Alanem Turingem. Jeho kritérium, známé v dějinách filosofie jako Turingův test, je podrobeno detailní analýze. Práce popisuje nejen původní námitky samotného Turinga, ale především pozdější diskuse v druhé polovině 20. století. Největší pozornost je věnována těmto kritikám: Lucasova matematická námitka využívající Gödelovu větu o neúplnosti, Searlův argument čínského pokoje konstatující nedostatečnost syntaxe pro sémantiku, Blockův návrh na použití brutální síly pro (...) řešení imitační hry, Frenchova teorie subkognitivních informací a Michieho skepticismus ohledně možnosti umělého vědomí. Závěr práce zachycuje současný stav recepce Turingova testu a představuje pokusy o jeho praktickou realizaci, například v každoroční soutěži o Loebnerovu cenu. Autor práce zastává názor, že ani po více než šedesáti letech od uveřejnění Turingova paradigmatického eseje stále neexistují žádné vážné důvody pro zamítnutí jeho tvrzení. Tradiční komputační funkcionalismus možná není ideální teorií vysvětlující činnost myslí a jako slibnější se může jevit vývoj v neurálních vědách, ale Turingův test je přesto užitečným a snad i jediným nástrojem pro detekci inteligence u lidmi vytvořených strojů. (shrink)

There are two main ways to teach a course online: synchronously or asynchronously. In an asynchronous course, students can log on at their convenience and do the course work. In a synchronous course, there is a requirement that all students be online at specific times, to allow for a shared course environment. In this article, the author discusses the strengths and weaknesses of synchronous online learning for the teaching of undergraduate philosophy courses. The author discusses specific strategies and technologies he (...) uses in the teaching of online philosophy courses. In particular, the author discusses how he uses videoconferencing to create a classroom-like environment in an online class. (shrink)

This third paper locates the synthetic neurorobotics research reviewed in the second paper in terms of themes introduced in the first paper. It begins with biological non-reductionism as understood by Searle. It emphasizes the role of synthetic neurorobotics studies in accessing the dynamic structure essential to consciousness with a focus on system criticality and self, develops a distinction between simulated and formal consciousness based on this emphasis, reviews Tani and colleagues' work in light of this distinction, and ends by forecasting (...) the increasing importance of synthetic neurorobotics studies for cognitive science and philosophy of mind going forward, finally in regards to most- and myth-consciousness. (shrink)