[marshfarm]

There's much more meaning than can be loaded into statements, thoughts, etc. And conscious will is a post-hoc after effect.

Any computer has far less access to the meaning load we experience since we don't compute thoughts, thoughts aren't about things, there is no content to thoughts, there are no references, representations, symbols, grammars, words in brains.

Searle is only at the beginning of this refutation of computers, we're far more along now.

It's just actions, syntax and space. Meaning is both an illusion and fantastically exponential. That contradiction has to be continually made correlational.

[fellowniusmonk]

meaning is an illusion? That's absurdly wrong, it's a performative contradiction to even say such a thing, you might not like semantic meaning but it, like information, physically exists, and even if you're a solipsist you can't deny state change, and state change is a meaning primitive, meaning primitives are one thing that must exist.

this isn't woo, this is just empirical observation, and no one is capable of credibly denying state change.

[marshfarm]

The idea of meaning is contradictory, it's not strictly an illusion. There's a huge difference. State changes mean differences, they don't ensure meaning. This is an obvious criteria. We have tasks and the demands are variable. We can assign meaning, but where is the credibility? Is it ever objectively understood? No. That's contradictory.

You have to look at mental events and grasp not only what they are, both material and process, how the come to happen, they're both prior and post-hoc, etc.

I study meaning in the brain. We are nit sure if it exists and the meaning we see in events and tasks are at a massive load. Any one event can have 100s even 1000s of meaningful changes to self, environment and others. That's contradictory. Searle is not even scratching the surface of the problem.

https://arxiv.org/vc/arxiv/papers/1811/1811.06825v2.pdf

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39282373/

https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-informati...