Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Can semantics be syntactic?

  • Published:
Synthese Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The author defends John R. Searle's Chinese Room argument against a particular objection made by William J. Rapaport called the ‘Korean Room’. Foundational issues such as the relationship of ‘strong AI’ to human mentality and the adequacy of the Turing Test are discussed. Through undertaking a Gedankenexperiment similar to Searle's but which meets new specifications given by Rapaport for an AI system, the author argues that Rapaport's objection to Searle does not stand and that Rapaport's arguments seem convincing only because they assume the foundations of strong AI at the outset.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Carnap, R.: 1967, The Logical Structure of the World: Pseudoproblems in Philosophy, University of California Press, Berkeley, California.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, D. J.: 1984, ‘Thought and Thought Experiments’, Philosophical Studies 45, 431–44.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fetzer, J. H.: 1988, ‘Signs and Minds: An Introduction to the Theory of Semiotic Systems’, in J. H. Fetzer, Aspects of Artificial Intelligence, Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp. 133–61.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fetzer, J. H.: 1989, ‘Language and Mentality: Computational, Representational, and Dispositional Conceptions’, Behaviorism 17, 21–39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flanagan, O. J.: 1984, The Science of the Mind, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gleick, J.: 1985, ‘They're Getting Better at Predicting the Weather (Even Though You Don't Believe It)’, New York Times Magazine, 27 January, pp. 30+.

  • Moor, J. H.: 1988, ‘The Pseudorealization Fallacy and the Chinese Room Argument’, in J. H. Fetzer (ed.), Aspects of Artificial Intelligence, Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp. 35–53.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rapaport, W. J.: 1981, ‘How to Make the World Fit Our Language: An Essay in Meinongian Semantics’, Grazer Philosophische Studien 14, 1–21.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rapaport, W. J.: 1985a, ‘Machine Understanding and Data Abstraction in Searle's Chinese Room’, in Proc. 7th Annual Conf. Congitive Science Soc., University of California at Irvine, 1985, Lawerence Erlbaum, Hilldale, New Jersey, pp. 341–45.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rapaport, W. J.: 1985b, ‘Meinongian Semantics for Propositional Semantic Networks’, in Proc. 23rd Annual Meeting Assoc. for Computational Linguistics, University of Chicago, 1985, Association for Computational Linguistics, Morristown, New Jersey, pp. 43–48.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rapaport, W. J.: 1986a, ‘Discussion: Searle's Experiments with Thought’, Philosophy of Science 53, 271–79.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rapaport, W. J.: 1986b, ‘Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, and the Chinese-Room Argument’, Abacus 3, 7–17.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rapaport, W. J.: 1986c, ‘Logical Foundations for Belief Representation’, Cognitive Science 10, 371–422.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rapaport, W. J.: 1988a, ‘Syntactic Semantics: Foundations of Computational Natural-Language Understanding’, in J. H. Fetzer (ed.), Aspects of Artificial Intelligence, Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp. 81–131.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rapaport, W. J.: 1988b, ‘To Think or Not to Think’, Nous 22, 585–609.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rapaport, W. J.: forthcoming, ‘Meinongian Semantics and Artificial Intelligence’, in P. Simons (ed.), Essays on Meinong, Philosophia Verlag, Munich. (A later version of Rapaport 1985b.)

    Google Scholar 

  • Searle, J. R.: 1980, ‘Minds, Brains, and Programs’, reprinted in John Haugeland (ed.), Mind Design: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, MIT Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 282–306.

    Google Scholar 

  • Searle, J. R.: 1982, ‘The Myth of the Computer’, New York Review of Books 29, 29 April, pp. 3–6. See also correspondence in ibid., 24 June, pp. 56–57.

    Google Scholar 

  • Searle, J. R.: 1984, Minds, Brains and Science, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shakespeare, W.: 1601, Twelfth Night, or What You Will, in G. Blakemore Evans (ed.), The Riverside Shakespeare, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Massachusetts, pp. 404–42.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turing, A. M.: 1964, ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, reprinted in Alan Ross Anderson (ed.), Minds and Machines, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, pp. 4–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Venit, S. and W. Bishop: 1985, Elementary Linear Algebra, Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, Boston, Massachusetts.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Minnesota, 55812, Duluth, MN, USA

    Neal Jahren

Authors
  1. Neal Jahren
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Additional information

The author wishes to thank Brad Bergeron, David J. Cole, James H. Fetzer, Charles E. Jahren, Michael Losonsky, William J. Rapaport, and Robyn Roslak for reading earlier drafts of this paper and/or their general discussions on cognitive science and AI. An earlier version of this paper was given at the Student Conference of the Minnesota Philosophical Society, Bethel College, 1988.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Jahren, N. Can semantics be syntactic?. Synthese 82, 309–328 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413879

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413879

Keywords

Search

Navigation