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A Philosophical Analysis From "Chinese Room Argument" To "Symbol Grounding Problem"

Posted on:2021-03-12Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y ZhangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2370330611465968Subject:Philosophy of science and technology
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The core assertion of Searle's "Chinese Room Argument"(CRA)is that the syntax is insufficient for semantics and understanding.According to Harnad,the key to dealing with the problem of understanding is to make the symbol meaningful,that is,to establish a connection between the symbol and outside world.For this reason,he specially proposed a framework focusing on how to establish this connection —the symbol grounding problem(SGP).SGP can be roughly described as: How can an agent assign the symbol semantic content in a non-derived way.With the failures of subsequent solutions,the framework has also been continuously improved in reflection,including the addition of "zero semantical commitment condition"(ZSCC)and "misrepresentation condition"(MC).In this paper,I reconstructed the devolopment of the ideas from CRA to SGP,and then the proposed of MC.After analysis,I pointed out that the ZSCC is incompatible with the MC.The content of this article is as follows: After the Introduction,I expanded the logical form of CRA base on Damper's analysis.Then combined with Harnad's point of view,I clarified the limitations of the system response,and summarized the structure of "understanding" that Harnad conceived.In Chapter 3,begins with an introduction of the SGP,I analysed the shortcomings in Hanad's plan.Among them,the most critical one is that it is difficult to take into account the determination of concept and meet the requirements of ZSCC.However,although Tadio and Floridi were strictly abided by the ZSCC,their scheme of "two-machine artificial agents" is still not succeed.The causal theory of reference and the semiotics that are similar to SGP in some respects were introduced in Chapter 4.According to the classification of "representatum",I revealed the necessity of extra information sources for high-level representations.Moreover,the SGP is bearing the same dilemma of disjunction problem with the causal theory of reference,which further lead to the problem of misrepresentation,and which cannot be solved without breaches the ZSCC.After that,I tried to analyze two possible approaches to solve the problem of misrepresentation,but they are all inevitably lead to the need for certain kinds of extrinsic semantics.So I concluded that the strict ZSCC is incompatible with the MC,and we should appropriately relax the former's restrictions on the SGP.
Keywords/Search Tags:chinese room argument, symbol grounding problem, zero semantical commitment condition, causal theory of reference, misrepresentation
PDF Full Text Request
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