As a spin off from the functional game (an object is its quantifiable properties and I can do this for any object) being played in the 20th Century we had the Chinese Room argument and then a spin-off known as the symbol grounding problem. How do symbols acquire meaning? (Many attempts to solve the symbol grounding problem have failed because the solution amounts to grounding in other symbols which leads to infinite regress).
Now, on a different tangent. I ask you what is it like to see red? You may refer to a brain state, a wavelength of light, etc. But if I gave you a list of all these properties would you know what it is like to see red (the phenomenal experience)? No. Why? Because what is like to see red is not a quantifiable property (its not a scalar, number, vector, etc). This is the conclusion of Mary’s Room.
This also seems to make qualia a perfect candidate for the grounding for symbols. It is worth scrutinizing why qualia works as a solution. It works because it does not have any computationally functional property which is entirely consistent with what we know. We can describe the equations of motion of a physical system without any mention of qualia. It appears qualia should not play any role in the dynamics of computation.
To be more precise, I suspect grounding is a mental phenomenon. Consider the dualist framing where mental events are accompanied by physical events. Now, if I use the idea of causality using counterfactuals. If I did not experience mental event of qualia there would be no mental event of grounding. Thus, qualia causes the grounding and meaning is not a physical causal relation at all.
Question
What are some strong arguments against grounding as a mental phenomenon?
For lots of animals, insects, and plants, smoke is a symbol for wildfire. The symbol is connected to its meaning by the natural causal relation between smoke and fire.
Also a photograph of smoke is causally connected to smoke, which is causally connected to fire. I’d say this relation is also a natural causal relation.
The words ‘smoke’ and ‘fire’, however, are connected to their meanings by speakers’ intent, which is a non-natural causal relation. It is non-natural in the sense that the symbols are basically arbitrary and their connections to meanings are established by their conventional use.
Qualia is what the smoke, picture, or words are like. It seems insufficient, I think, for connecting them with their meanings.
Is smoke a symbol for wildfire only for animals, insects, and plants that have had past experience with wildfire and smoke? If not, and I assume not, then I’m thinking it’s instinctual. In such cases, does smoke give them the knowledge that fire is near? Or is it a non-specific urge to flee (or whatever it is a plant does)?
Smoke accellerates the germination of some plants, i.e. some chemical triggers them to release their pollen before they’re destroyed by the flames. Their response increases the fitness of their kind.
Animals smell smoke and run away, or dig themselves into the soil etc. They too respond to some chemical in smoke.
One doesn’t need to experience what smoke is like for it to mean fire.
I suggest that Plato’s “unwritten” doctrine tackles just this issue. Saussure’s “sound-idea” and Goodman’s “character” are easier to understand, though, because they each look at a different specific situation.
Saussure looks at spoken signifiers ( “sound-ideas”).
Goodman looks at written signifiers (“characters”).
The symbol must be “repeatable.” A different qualitative sensory event, in itself non-repeatable, has to be treated as a repetition. A symbol ( sign) gets its “meaning” as the role it plays in qualitative sensory-affective practical life.
I largely agree with you. When we measure a situation in our environment, we “compress” a very qualitatively rich situation into a portable less qualitative situation. A rich historical event can be “compressed” into an inscribed numeral. This is a measurement. But the numeral is itself another empirical object. We do not want to lose ourselves in a handwaving mathemagical platonism. We never leave the realm of “quality.”
Note that I dislike the term “qualia.” We don’t need dualism. As speaking primates, we each access our shared environment through our individual sense organs. We all call apples “red,” but we cannot see apples through the eyes of fellow primates but only through our own eyes. So there is “wiggle room” for “your” red to differ from “my” red.
But there is also “wiggle room” for a sign or symbol to “signify” differently for different speaking primates. So we don’t have “mystical essences.” We have an “average response” to signs as empirical objects.
OK, let’s use “quality” ( or Plato’s “indefinite dyad”) for the “sensory stuff” that signs are “made of.” This is a start, but “pure quality” is not enough. The symbol is necessarily repeatable, if only “ideally.” I treat Sally’s pencil scribble as the numeral “3” and I treat Joe’s pencil scribble — which is actually different — as nevertheless another inscription of the same numeral 3.
We are trained into enacting the “categoricity” of sensory events.
So I would agree with you that “quality” is the “ground” of symbols. I would enrich this with help from pragmatism. We trade signs to seek pleasure ( valued quality) and avoid displeasure ( disvalued quality.) “Power is knowledge,” and “power” is understood “locally” here as what aids a particular speaking primate in its movement toward “valued quality.” We don’t all care about the same things, though we do all care about some basic things. We all need air and water, etc.
But I would not use “mind” or other internalist language for what is better expressed as our shared primate umvelt. We are animals. Our environment is “immediately significant” to us, “immediately structured” in terms of our primate hopes and fears. Because we are time-binding speaking primates, we “decorate” our environment with stipulated or arbitrary “signs proper.” These are best understood as tools that play roles in our cooperative coping with our environment. Note that great poetry and abstruse philosophy are both part of this coping.
I don’t know. A chemical in the smoke might give an animal an overwhelming urge to dig dig dig, or run run run, without giving them any thought of “fire”. They might not have any idea why they are reacting the way they do.
I don’t know. I’ve never looked into the topic of meaning, and never heard of grounding before. So I don’t know what’s established knowledge or theory. So my thoughts might need some salt.
I can’t see how smoke can mean fire to an animal that has never experienced either before, but acts a certain way when exposed to smoke because of the programming their DNA has hardwired into them. That animal might not experience fire even then, if its instincts cause it to run fast and far enough.
Also, if smoke does “mean” fire, but it’s a chemical in the smoke that gets the animal moving, then it’s really the chemical that “means” fire. Which also seems strange to me.
You and I know that smoke is caused by fire. So, if we see/smell smoke, we know there must be a fire somewhere. We can say smoke means fire. But that’s because we have intelligence that lets us assign meaning to things. The animal doesn’t. I believe meaning does exist in the universe, and did before it was called that by any intelligence like ours. For example, I think DNA means strings of amino acids and proteins. But I don’t think smoke means fire nearly as explicitly.
So how far off an I with all of that??
(Fun fact. I’m in southern NY. Recently, we had smoke that was literally making it difficult to see mountains a few miles away. It was from fires in Canada. The closest point in Canada to me, in a straight line, is 235 miles.)
Sorry I was in the middle of writing this and decided to read about how archelogists do this.
q) language is a shared experience. It’s not personal unless we’re talking about supernatural or the creator of the language itself.
k) systems can be valid on paper and not be connected to a real world counterpart.
n) sentences can be logically and grammar correct yet still mean nothing.
p) words have semantic closure through a syntactic circle.
If qualia has no functional role than it cannot cause the grounding. That’s assigning it a role which violates it’s own internal rules. Once this is fixed, then it depends upon your basis. Are you coming at this from a physicialism perspective or so on. I think a great case study on how to review this involves how archelogists use statistical analysis on accomplishing this very feat.
“language is a shared experience. It’s not personal unless we’re talking about supernatural or the creator of the language itself.”
The symbol grounding problem is not about how the community assigns shared meaning (atleast originally formulated by Stevan Harnad in 1990). It is how any individual assigns meaning? Harnad’s problem is: How can a purely symbolic system (like a computer) acquire intrinsic meaning, when its symbols are only defined by their relations to other symbols
There is actually an idea is missing in the chain of thought (due to length concerns) when I wrote: “Many attempts to solve the symbol grounding problem have failed because the solution amounts to grounding in other symbols which leads to infinite regress.” (And why I am convinced it must have a non-functional role. I can share this if requested)
"If qualia has no functional role than it cannot cause the grounding. " I disagree. Physical events cause subsequent physical events. Mental events cause subsequent mental events. I am claiming the symbol grounding problem is a mental one. Thereby, it can be caused by another mental event. Note: this does not exclude the idea that both grounding and qualia have physical counterparts.
I’d say that human beings enact the “meaning” of computations. We make up rules for symbols for our purposes. We are meatpatterns with a need to feed and replicate.
I think you might want to drop the dualism. As I see it, “mental” and “physical” are just fuzzy pragmatic categories.
