ggast@peg.UUCP (12/17/89)
I agree entirely that Searle is missing something.Everyone who has
learnt a foreign language will know immediately what I mean.When
you start learning a foreign language your thought process is in
your mother language, and each word of a sentence you want to
speak in the foreign language you have to translate according to
memorized rules .This is a difficult and tedious process, just
like learning to play piano where you have to translate notes into
keystrokes consciously.
Once you have practiced the foreign language or piano playing
enough the translation process becomes automatic and
subconscious.This increases the speed of the operation
considerably and you start thinking in the foreign language.
Following Minky's ideas I would say during learning a parallel
language agency with cross-connections to your mother language is
created and with enough practice it runs just as smoothly as your
old one.Semantics will result from these cross-connections.
In that sense you "understand" the foreign language in the moment
the prallel processing runs automatically and Chinese symbols are
correlated automatically to English symbols.But I have to add that
you " understand " English only because you have once learnt to
associate acoustic symbols with real things (nouns), processes
(verbs) or attributes (adjectives and adverbs).This includes the
naming of certain emotions and feelings too.You will associate
happiness with a smiling face because your mother once said she
feels happy and smiled while doing so.To "understand" does not
only imply correct application of rules but also an emotional
quality such as having a feeling of security in the application of
rules.This feeling of security gives rise to another feeling, that
is satisfaction and it will arise once the application of rules
is performed on a subconscious level.
Dr.Gert Gast
Byron Bay 2481
Australiacik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) (12/17/89)
In article <130200002@peg>, ggast@peg.UUCP writes: > > > I agree entirely that Searle is missing something.Everyone who has > learnt a foreign language will know immediately what I mean.When > you start learning a foreign language your thought process is in > your mother language, and each word of a sentence you want to > speak in the foreign language you have to translate according to > memorized rules .This is a difficult and tedious process, just > like learning to play piano where you have to translate notes into > keystrokes consciously. This may be why there is so little understanding. Certainly there is some of this; even in one's own language, when one looks up words in a dictionary. But understanding is not obtained in this way. Even in languages which I know poorly, there is considerable amalgamation in my thought processes with my native English. This produces difficulty mostly in trying to use the other language, as the translation process runs in the background, it at all. Understanding mathematics is somewhat different. The ability to use mathematical objects even with great facility has nothing to do with understanding. I maintain that it can even detract from understanding, and make it difficult to acquire this understanding. It is almost as if acquiring the skills in manipulation, proof, etc., makes it difficult to learn what is at the basis. What makes it harder is that sometimes there is no known basis, and that it is mere accident. A mathematical concept can even be learned without learning to manipulate. It corresponds to the "leaning with understanding" a foreign language. The biggest problems that people, especially non-mathematicians, have is using mathematics as a language to precisely express their ideas. -- Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907 Phone: (317)494-6054 hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet, UUCP)
ladkin@icsib (Peter Ladkin) (12/18/89)
In article <130200002@peg>, ggast@peg writes: > I agree entirely that Searle is missing something.Everyone who has > learnt a foreign language will know immediately what I mean. i'm quite sure that searle is aware of most of these obvious points, and has answered them. it seems appropriate, before deciding what potential weaknesses his arguments have, to ask him about them. peter ladkin
yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) (12/18/89)
In article <20778@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> ladkin@icsib (Peter Ladkin) writes: >In article <130200002@peg>, ggast@peg writes: >> I agree entirely that Searle is missing something.Everyone who has >> learnt a foreign language will know immediately what I mean. > >i'm quite sure that searle is aware of most of these obvious points, and >has answered them. it seems appropriate, before deciding what potential >weaknesses his arguments have, to ask him about them. He replies to many of them in an article in Mind Design (edited by Haugeland). The article is worth reading if you're interested in the Chinese Room debate, but I think a couple of his replies completely miss the point -- in particular his reply to the robot reply and his reply to the systems reply. _______________________________________________________________________________ Brian Yamauchi University of Rochester yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu Computer Science Department _______________________________________________________________________________
ggast@peg.UUCP (12/20/89)
In response 3 peter ladkin writes: > i'm quite sure that searle is aware of most of these obvious > points, and has answered them. it seems appropriate, before >deciding what potential weaknesses his arguments have, to ask him >about them. So what would his answer be? Should anyone be able to give me his or any of his co-workers e- mail address I will be happy to ask him myself. ****************************************************************** * Dr.Gert Gast e-mail: ggast@peg.pegasus.oz [UUCP] * * 95 Bangalow Rd peg: ggast [APC Networks ] * * Byron Bay 2481 * * Australia 'Minds are simply what brains do'(M.Minsky) * * Tel (066) 856903 * ******************************************************************
markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark William Hopkins) (12/30/89)
In article <130200002@peg> ggast@peg.UUCP writes: > I agree entirely that Searle is missing something.Everyone who has > learnt a foreign language will know immediately what I mean.When > you start learning a foreign language your thought process is in > your mother language,... I take issue with this. When I learned Hungarian, I learned it on its own terms. More generally, the language is taught there to foreign students using a text written entirely in Hungarian. The results are what makes that nation the world's leader in language teaching. The difficulty you experience are undoubtedly a by-product of the way foreign language has traditionally been taught. > Once you have practiced the foreign language or piano playing > enough the translation process becomes automatic and > subconscious... Therein lies the issue, there were frequently occasions where I could say or read something in Hungarian and yet not know how to translate it into English, though I knew what it meant. Obviously my understanding of the language did not derive from my understanding of my first language -- not even from day 1. Furthermore, there are often occasions where I use words in my own native language, English, where I do not know their meaning but know exactly what situation fits the word and just happen to use it where it's appropriate. Language understanding is a process whereby language is "compiled" into real or imagined neural-muscular and sensory signals. You train the mind in the knowledge of a language by establishing links between the most abstract concepts, through the intermediate concepts, ultimately down to the base-level concepts which are our subroutines for controlling our basic bodily functions and signal processing (including vision). There is a hierarchy in abstraction here that you progress through, and if you are taught different aspects of a language in the wrong order your progress is going to be greatly impeded and you'll end up having to compensate by resorting to techniques such as "interpreting" the language in your native tongue. If you are taught the language abstracted away from the context of its use (i.e. in the "disembodied state") the same effects likewise will result, because the bottom-most level has to be "concretized" in terms of actual base-level experience. That's the lesson taught by my experience and numerous other experiences of mine and of other people that I have observed.