God is dead! Late breaking news!! !

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It is you who need to read Searle Chinese room. Searle only concludes that the Chinese room does not understand Chinese. He does not say therefore the response of the Chinese is meaningless. On the contrary, by definition, the response makes perfect sense. It only proves that a machine can utter 'meaningful' words without understanding what it is uttering.


What do you mean by 'add meaning to qualia'? What 'meaning' for 1+1=2 do you add?

Meaning requires intentionality. I do not know how to make something obvious any clearer. "*!" is just an ink pattern until we impose a meaning (definition) on it.
I suppose you have a different definition of "meaning" perhaps "a pattern of matter". Patterns of matter lack intentionality and so therefore are meaningless (using the conventional definition of meaning and not yours)
Searle did say that the result is meaningless. * How can those chinese letters (as only patterns of ink) refer to anything, including english words. I think you are confused because you think that I am saying that patterns cannot exist in the physical world. I never said that. I am saying that they cannot refer to anything and therefore they are meaningless. I am not saying that ordered patterns in nature are unimportant (the regular patterns in nature make life possible)
I am saying they do not refer to anything, and therefore,by the conventional definition of meaning are meaningless.
* It is directly connected to the symbol grounding problem.

Lets take something very complicated, a brain. What does your brain refer to? Obviously, it simply is,it refers to nothing. I am not saying that a brain is not a very complicated physical pattern. I am saying that it does not refer to anything,it lacks intentionality and therefore is meaningless.

You are having things backward. Words and meaning doesn't exist in reality, we just use physical patterns as placeholders for those abstract constructs (think about chess pieces).

A computer have no problem with pattern recognition or symbol manipulation. However you are asserting that is not enough. You assert that instead, there needs to be some magical demons inside the head to crate some 'meaning qualia'.

Ok, you believe that meaning does not exist. I disagree.
But that "means" that what you just said is meaningless!
So because I said that qualia (feelings) exist I am saying that magical demons exist?
PS: As to your chess pieces comment, were you refering to Wittgenstein's "language games"? Please explain. I do not see how "language games" applies here.

Do you really think meaning is some real stuff to be injected into some symbol (like a spell?). That is magic.

What next: You must be thinking Batman and Harry Potter are made of some real stuff or we cannot be talking about them.


No. I am talking about fictionalism.

So you are saying that if I say, “I feel pain” I have not given any more information than “my C-fibers are firing”?
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mater ... gAgaEliMat
You are confusing epistemology with ontology.

Not even that. If you are on some drugs, you may not 'feel pain' even if your C-fibers are firing. In many cases these folk psychology is too vague to talk about reducing the theory to neurology.


Your quote does not mention epistemology or ontology...

And Dennett argues convincingly in his books Consciousness Explained, using real experiments, that 'subjective experience' has too many gaps to be called epistemology.

To technically die, one first must exist.

(Zing!)

See my thread "quining qualia" (I provided a link, 8th post from the top 2nd page) Dennett's argument is proven to be at best circular.

Last edited by wittgenstein on 29 May 2013, 6:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

"Not even that. If you are on some drugs, you may not 'feel pain' even if your C-fibers are firing. In many cases these folk psychology is too vague to talk about reducing the theory to neurology."
01001011
That makes no sense in the context of your beliefs (sorry as an eliminative materialist you have no beliefs).Your beliefs imply that C-fibers firing will cause no pain even if the person is drug free.

You are just misinterpreting me. I did not say nothing happens. On the contrary 'pain' is too simplistic to describe precisely what is happening.

The book has a lot more than a paper. I am talking real experiments, which has nothing to do with your counter argument.

If you cannot measure anything exact in the first place, then this example doesn't have much meaning.

If nothing is exact, and nothing perfect, then the opposite of what you say must be true, God does exist.

When something is out of reach of proof and validation, we humans usually do not believe, all evidence is discounted as fraud til the day that impossible thing proves itself to exist, there by effecting our lives, nay-sayers being no longer able to deny it and scoff at those who believed. No human creation is exact or perfect. Not even the fabric of time and space, being so easily bent by black holes, is perfect.

If God existed (which he does), you do realize the absence of himself in matter measurable by science, he would be perfectly capable of doing himself? And he there fore does this to make the ones that believe in him truly stand out, for it was their free will and not God's influence to believe in him and be good men and women? And if he does exist, Then he is still God, capable of perfection in stealth, a parallel universe of spiritual energy, with no matter at all, a construct designed by God for him influence our world without even existing in it.

If an argument is invalid, no amount of experiments will prove it otherwise.
There is a difference between validity and truth.
For example,
Here is a valid and true argument.
1. Socrates was a man.
2. All men are mortal.
3. Therefore, Socrates was mortal.
Here is an example of a valid but not true argument.
1. All Martians eat snakes.
2. Bob is a Martian.
3. Therefore Bob eats snakes.
Dennett's experiments ( those he uses from other sources) are true. However, his conclusion does not follow because his argument is invalid ( in his case it is circular)
For example,
1. The Earth is a planet ( true)
2. Dogs are mammals. ( true)
However, it would invalid to say,
3. Therefore, rocks float in water.
Actually, the "therefore" could also be a true proposition and the argument would still be invalid.
What Dennett does is use experimental results that have nothing to do with the existence or nonexistence of qualia.