> If two thing cannot possibly be observed to be different then they are the same.
I think that suffers the same flaw as logical positivism: if my axioms can't find a difference, there isn't one, no way my assumptions are wrong. (Namely, my axiom is that external observations capture the entirety of reality, there is nothing subjective.)
If two people laugh at a joke, one faking and one actually finding it funny, what is the externally observable difference? Assume the faker has been trained in all manner of knowledge about what would make the joke funny, they just don't find it so.
That feels off. It’s like me saying I don’t know English. I merely know the correct alghorithm to give the correct responses to things people give me as input.
There supposedly is a (semantic) process in your brain that makes you believe you understand the sentences you are reading and writing that is on top of the (symbolic) process that tells you what to say and how to say it. And that's the quid of the issue. Searle argues that symbolic computation cannot produce understanding at the semantic level.
I think that suffers the same flaw as logical positivism: if my axioms can't find a difference, there isn't one, no way my assumptions are wrong. (Namely, my axiom is that external observations capture the entirety of reality, there is nothing subjective.)
If two people laugh at a joke, one faking and one actually finding it funny, what is the externally observable difference? Assume the faker has been trained in all manner of knowledge about what would make the joke funny, they just don't find it so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument