You can believe whatever you want about arithmetic as a foundation of your own metaphysics. I personally think it's silly but I'm not interested in arguing this any further b/c to close the explanatory gap from extensionality to intentionality you'd essentially have to solve several open problems in various branches of philosophy. Write out your argument in full form & then maybe you'll have something worth discussing.
The great thing about your latest reply is that it takes no time at all to see that you have still not offered any justification or explanation of anything you have claimed.
Then you will have no difficulty in pointing out where that happens. While you are about it, you can point out where you think I said people can read & interpret numbers by imbuing them w/ actual meaning & semantics.
It's in your response. You're welcome to elaborate your argument about Enigma ciphers in other terms if you want but you'll reach the same conclusion as I did.
So, nothing to see here so far - I can't really respond to allegations that are imaginary.
You also claim that I am begging the question. How do you justify that? It is not, of course, begging the question for opponents of Searle to suppose his conclusion is wrong: everyone disputing any argument does that.
The Enigma response is very straightforward. While, in general, simulations are not equivalent to what is being simulated, it is often the case that for information manipulation they are, owing to the substrate independence of information. It is Searle who needs a better argument here, and he never came up with one.
I agree there is nothing to see in any substrate independent computation unless there is a conscious observer involved which is why you are confused about your own argument.
Ah, now we are making some progress on where the confusion lies (not that saying "you're confused" without justification was ever much of an argument.)
The first thing to note is that it is not necessary to dispute the notion that semantics come from a conscious observer in order to demonstrate that Searle's argument fails, as that argument is precisely about whether that conscious observer could be an entity deriving its consciousness from a digital computation. As things stand, the only thing saving you from formally begging the question is that you have still not presented a specific argument against my objection[1] to Searle's response to the simulation reply; you still seem to be trying to insinuate that it fails without being specific.
Maybe you also mistakenly think that what I am saying in this thread is supposed to be an argument for computationalism? It is just an argument that Searle failed to make his case against computationalism on account of (among other things) an unsuccessful response to the simulation reply. (I suspect that computationalism is essentially correct, but I do not claim to know that it is.)
[1] It's not just my objection; Dennett, the Churchlands, even Putnam and David "hard problem" Chalmers have raised similar objections.
