From: kcalder@blueyonder.co.uk   
      
   In message , Omixochitl   
    writes   
   >Kevin Calder  wrote in news:t2f9w   
   >$IfnkOBFwoY@cableinet.co.uk:   
      
   >> Chinese.  This is because he only understands a formal system designed   
   >> to produce Chinese answers using formal symbol manipulation, not the   
   >> Chinese language.   
      
   >Wait a minute, the Chinese language itself *is* a formal system designed to   
   >produce answers using formal symbol manipulation.  So is every other   
   >written language, and every spoken or sign language, for that matter...   
      
   I have wondered about this.  I'd say he still doesn't understand   
   Chinese, but might say that he understands some other kind of "language"   
   which may in some odd way have its own semantics.  (and at a level of   
   abstraction that, without intervention is beyond his reach, is producing   
   Chinese answers).   
      
   I'm not trying to argue that language doesn't have some sort of   
   Chomskian deep structure BTW, rather that the structure isn't all there   
   is to language.  As far as I'm aware (and I could be in need of   
   correction) Chomsky and Searle agree that you can't get semantics from   
   syntax.  In other words, the formal system part of language doesn't   
   account for every aspect of language as we experience it.   
      
   I am typing this because it seems to mean something!  If I were   
   producing this post by shuffling symbols in a completely different   
   system I literally would not know what I am typing!   
      
   Chomsky thinks that the semantics part isn't even the sort of thing we   
   can study, though Searle disagrees.   
      
   Maybe it clearer if we reformulate the Chinese room.   
      
   Ok, lets say I am sitting in a room with and IN computer and an OUT   
   computer.  I have a rule book.  Some symbols appear on the IN computer   
   and I look them up in the rule book and hit a specific sequence of keys   
   on the OUT computer.  For those of you outside the room the symbols on   
   the IN computer relate to newsgroup posts from alt.cyberpunk, and the   
   symbols on the OUT computer determine *my* replies.  Except that I never   
   really get to read either the original posts, or my replies.  I have no   
   knowledge of what is going on in alt.cyberpunk,  I don't know what music   
   is the most cyberpunk, or whether cyberpunk is dead or not, or who   
   bothered to flame atlas109 for daring to ask us to help him with his   
   homework.  I certainly understand some formal system that can be used to   
   produce newsgroup posts, but I don't understand it in the same way that   
   I understand the post I am composing right now.  In the first case the   
   semantics is missing.   
      
   Unless of course you want to say that the formal system for producing   
   newsgroup posts is a language of its own, and that I understand it   
   syntactically (I can shuffle the symbols according to the rules) but   
   that I also understand it in a semantic sense that I simply can't   
   explain to anyone who "doesn't speak the language".   
      
   I'm not sure about this, but it could be true.  I will have to go away   
   for another month and think about it :)   
      
   --   
   Kevin Calder   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)