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sion itself. This something must be inside you. You have an internal representation of the meaning of the expressions you interpret. Thus you think. |
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CSP: That's thinking? I am then a Great Thinker indeed. Certainly, my hard disk contains a lot of software. But everything I have is expressions that interpret other expressions. When you type in I love roses, I recognize that the way you connected three expressions into a string fits the set of grammatical rules that I have learned through other instructions I received under the form of expressions. And for your expressions I find in my memory other expressions that interpret them. You seem to distinguish between uttered expressions, as something existing in the external world and materially testable, and my interpretations, which take place inside me. But my outside and my inside coincide. My outside is made of the same stuff as my inside: expressions. You seem to discriminate between expressions, which are materially testable, which you can touch, and interpretations, which you call mental representation. I don't follow you. I substitute expressions with expressions, symbols with symbols, signs with signs. You can touch my interpretants. They are made of the same stuff as your words. You provide me with an image, and I give you back a word; you provide me with a word, and I give you back an image. Any expression can become, in its turn, the interpretandum of an interpretant, and vice versa. Any expression can become the content of another expression, and vice versa. If you ask me what salt is, I answer "NaCl," and if you ask me what NaCl is, I answer "salt." The real problem is to find further interpretants for both. Being an expression and being an interpretation are not a matter of nature but a matter of role. You cannot change your nature (they say), but you can change your role. |
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Smith: I see your point of view. But your masters are not computers. They should have mental representations. |
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CSP: I do not know whether my memory is the same as that of my masters. According to my information, they are very uncertain about what they have inside them (as a matter of fact, they are not even sure that they have an Inside). That is the reason why they set me up. They know what I have inside me, and, when I speak in a way that they understand, they presume that they have the same software inside them. Sometimes they suspect that what is inside them depends on what they put inside me. They suspect that their way of organizing the external world depends on the encyclopedia they have given me. One day, they instructed me to keep this message in my memory. It was uttered by one of their wise men (I was named Charles Sanders in his honor): |
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