> "The original Chinese room argument is so
> simple that its point tends to get lost in
> the dozens of interpretations, comments, and
> criticisms to which it has been subjected
> over the years. The point is this: a digital
> computer is a device which manipulates symbols,
> without any reference to their meaning or
> interpretation. Human beings, on the other hand,
> when they think, do something much more than that.
> A human mind has meaningful thoughts, feelings, and
> mental contents generally. Formal symbols by themselves
> can never be enough for mental contents, because the
> symbols, by definition, have no meaning (or
> interpretation, or semantics) except insofar as
> someone outside the system gives it to them."
There is also the problem that reasoning with formal symbols in accordance with fixed rules is only applicable where, to the degree required for the reasoning to remain valid, meaning (identity) remains unchanged with changes in relations. This is the point Whitehead makes in the discussion of the limits of deductive reasoning I pointed to some time ago. (‹http://squawk.ca/lbo-talk/0111/0208.html›)
He provides an illustration of the limits of reasoning in accordance with fixed routines in his discussion of the rational approach to business forecasting in Chapter 6 (Foresight) of Adventures of Ideas. This also explains the limits of such reasoning as a basis for forecasting phenomena where internal relations are relevant.
He was naive, however, about the ability of the kind of mind likely to become dominant in business to acquire a capacity for rational foresight in his sense (the chapter began as a lecture at the Harvard Business School).
"we are faced with a fluid, shifting situation in the immediate future.
Rigid maxims, a rule-of-thumb routine, and caste-iron particular doctrines will spell ruin. The business of the future must be controlled by a somewhat different type of men to that of previous centuries. The type is already changing, and has already changed so far as the leaders are concerned. The Business Schools of Universities are concerned with spreading this newer type throughout the nations by aiming at the production of the requisite mentality." Adventures of Ideas pp. 96-7
It was partly on the basis of this argument of Whitehead's re formal logic that Frank Ramsey distinguished "human logic" from formal logic, a distinction also embraced by Keynes.
Keynes also claimed, citing Whitehead, that a psychologically based misidentification of reason per se with reasoning in accordance with fixed rules was a common source of invalid inference. This will explain what Doug in his new book calls "statistical fetishism."
"the precise nature of the conditions in which the observations [underpinning calculations of "coefficients of observed correlation"] took place and the numerous other considerations of one sort or another, of which we must take account when we wish to generalise, are not usually susceptible of numerical or statistical expression.
"The truth of this is obvious; yet, not unnaturally, the more complicated and technical the preliminary statistical investigations become, the more prone inquirers are to mistake the statistical description for an inductive generalisation. [Footnote: Cf. Whitehead, Introduction to Mathematics, p. 27: 'There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.']"
Ted