Cognitive Science 108/ Linguistics 108

The Challenge of Cognitive Science to Western Philosophy

Readings (in Philosophy in the Flesh)

Reading for Tuesday, October 5, 1999: Read Chapter 13.

Homework 6

Due at the Beginning of Class Tuesday, October 5, 1999.

Ground Rules: Discuss the homework with the members of your group. No group notes are to be taken. Write up your homeworks individually. They should be in 12 point type, either 1 & 1/2 spaced or double spaced, with at least 1 inch margins. No late homeworks.

This homework is on the course website:

http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~bbergen/cs108/index.html

We suggest the following: Go to the website and download a copy of the homework. Copy the questions into a new file, and fill in your answers after each question, using a different font (e.g., put the questions in italics and the answers in roman). This way it will be clearer to the grader which answer goes with which question, and you will have an overview of all your answers to questions, one by one, at the end of the course.

Chapter 12

  1. Which metaphors for mind are each of the following sentences instances of?

a. This argument has a hidden assumption.
  1. A step has been skipped in the argument.
  2. The meaning of the whole is the sum of the meaning of the parts.
  3. Can you translate this sentence into another sentence whose meaning is clearer?
  4. Words can fit the world.
  5. What is the cash value of his claim?
  6. Can you decompose that sentence into its logical form?
  7. The simplest form of logic is sentential calculus.
  1. Consider the following quotations from two Anglo-American analytic philosophers:

    2. Preoccupation with language has been a distinctive feature of twentieth-century philosophy…. What is new is the study of language in order to achieve results on other subjects – mind, morals, nature, even God. The idea is that language can be made to yield truths about such subjects, or at least solutions to problems concerning them, as well as about itself.

    -V.C. Chappelle, Ordinary Language, p. 1

    At any rate, I have one answer to the question of why language matters to philosophy now. It matters for the reason that ideas mattered in seventeenth-century philosophy, because ideas then, and sentences now, serve as the interface between the knowing subject and what is known. The sentence matters even more if we begin to dispense with the fiction of a knowing subject, and regard discourse as autonomous. Language matters to philosophy because of what knowledge has become. … Discourse … [is] that which constitutes human knowledge.

    -Ian Hacking, Why Does Language Matter To Philosophy, p. 187.

    Discuss briefly how the metaphorical entailments on pp. 248-249 relate to these beliefs about the nature of philosophy. (Which metaphors and specifically which entailments give rise to the beliefs?)

  2. In Searle's Chinese Room argument, Searle's mind plays a major role:
  1. Searle's mind understands that Searle in the room and what he has been told to do,
  2. it understands that it is given Chinese characters as input and is to give Chinese characters as output,
  3. it understands the rule book he is using to perform the task,
  4. it understands that it does not understand Chinese, and so on.

In Searle's "analogy" between himself and a computer, these aspects of Searle's mind do not map onto the computer at all:

    1. The Computer does not understand where it is and what it has been told to do,
    2. The computer does not understand that it is given symbols as input and is supposed to give symbols as output
    3. The computer does not understand its program but just runs according to it
    4. The computer does not understand that it does not understand the symbols it is processing.

Yet, Searle argues that the fact that he does not understand Chinese (in the argument) proves that the computer does not understand Chinese. That is, he is arguing that a fact about his mind (it's lack of understanding of Chinese) proves a "corresponding" fact about the computer (it doesn't understand Chinese).

Is there a problem with Searle's argument? If so, say what it is. If not, say why not.