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Article 2370 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Causes and Reasons
Summary: programs have no causal powers
Keywords: intensionality, agency, causation, syntax, semantics, pragmatics
Message-ID: <1991Dec23.041134.6879@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 23 Dec 91 09:11:32 GMT
References: <1991Dec19.133719.22212@oracorp.com>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
Lines: 146
Nntp-Posting-Host: zariski.harvard.edu

In article <1991Dec19.133719.22212@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com writes:
>DMC = Daryl McCullough
>MZ = Mikhail Zeleny

DMC:
>>>I don't understand what you are driving at here. Are you saying that a
>>>program can't be correctly implemented without some conscious agent's
>>>intervention? 

MZ:
>>As I have argued all along, interpretation, like all semantic activity, is
>>essentially creative.

DMC:
>And, all along, I have not understood your argument. It seems to me
>that a computer is perfectly capable of compiling and running a
>program, a syntactic object. That was Chalmer's point, that while a
>program, as scratches on a piece of paper, has no causal properties, a
>program when run by a computer *does*.

You might have noticed that Chalmers has wisely chosen to abstain from
maintaining his ridiculous claims about the causal powers of programs.  To
reiterate my point, a computer program, or a Turing machine, is possessed
only of formal syntactical structure, which neither determines its
interpretation (semantics), nor the causal effects thereof (pragmatics).
The former is determined by the compiler, the latter -- by the machine
architecture and operation.

DMC:
>>>Isn't that what a compiler is supposed to do?

MZ:
>>The compiler is a program.  Who implements it?

DMC:
>Another compiler that has already been implemented. Sure, the first
>compilers were implemented by humans, but since then most compilers
>have been bootstrapped; one uses earlier versions of a compiler to
>compile later versions of the very same compiler.

As I write these words on the screen of my terminal, I expect them to
be reproduced on thousands, perhaps millions of other screens around the
world by scores of newsreader programs.  Yet I should hope that whoever
reads them would know enough to ascribe their authorship to me, rather than
to the software involved in their transmission.  On the other hand, the
felicity of the latter is undoubtedly due to the authors of the software.
The moral: pay attention to the division of labor, and make sure to give
credit where credit is due.

DMC:
>Certainly writing a compiler program is a creative act, as is the
>writing of any program. However, interpreting programs (in the sense
>of going from syntax to action, not in the sense of going from syntax
>to meaning; I have been focusing on "causal powers") is pretty
>uncreative, and pretty dull (which is why we get machines to do it).

Somebody has to design the machines to do it.  If semantic interpretation
is not determined by the syntax, nor are the pragmatic consequences.  This
is intensionality in action: if I say to you, "Go catch a falling star",
it's up to you whether to interpret my request literally or metaphorically.
And so it is in all other, much simpler cases.

DMC:
>>>Anyway, a program is a mathematical description of a class of
>>>machines. When someone says that the program has this or that
>>>property, they are only talking about the correct implementations: to
>>>say that I is an incorrect implementation of program P is to say that
>>>I is *not* an implementation of P.

MZ:
>> Call it what you will, but correctness of an interpretation is a
>> non-recursive notion.

DMC:
>Why is that relevant? The claim we are discussing is whether every
>correct implementation of a program will have certain causal powers,
>not whether you or I or a computer can recognize all correct
>implementations.

Consider that the intensionality order is: syntax < semantics < pragmatics. 

In other words, producing the correct consequences takes even more
creativity than figuring out the correct interpretation.

DMC:
>>>You are drifting away from Chalmer's original point: the meaning of a
>>>program is a machine with certain causal properties; properties of the
>>>form "inputing a 5 will cause the output of 25", or whatever. An
>>>implementation of this program will have this causal property by
>>>virtue of what it *means* to be an implementation.

MZ:
>>Quite so.  However note that, if your process of "inputing a 5 will cause
>>the output of 25" is construed as a physical activity, then I have argued
>>that the physical causal powers of a program's implementation are
>>irreducibly intensional with respect to, and non-emergent from its logical
>>structure, even when the latter is construed semantically, as interpreted
>>by a conscious agent.

DMC:
>I don't know what that paragraph means. Let me just reiterate my
>claim: the logical structure of a program causes certain behavior in a
>physical computer running the program. The behavior produced is itself
>causal; it can cause email messages to be sent, it can set off a burglar
>alarm, it can multiply numbers together.

Look Daryl, I don't know how to explain this any clearer.  Once again, the
logical structure of the world is less finely differentiated than its
physical, causal structure, or even its mathematical structure, as
evidenced by the failure of logicism; which is to say that mathematics,
and, a fortiori, physics, introduce more assumptions about the world than
does logic alone.  So the logical structure of a program cannot, in and of
itself, induce a physical, causal structure of its execution by a computer;
it takes extra constraining to achieve this effect, and insofar as it
involves interpretation, the job of furnishing the extra constraints is
essentially creative.

>MZ:
>>Which is to say that meaning is a burden that has to be borne by
>>consciousness.

DMD:
>Sure. What this thread is ultimately about is whether a computer can
>have consciousness. Searle said no, because it doesn't have the right
>causal properties. Now, are you saying that it can't have the right
>causal properties because it doesn't have consciousness?

No.  I am saying that the computer is not an agent, but a mere device that
extends the active powers of those who build and program it; in other
words, it can only "act" metaphorically, on behalf of its creators.

>Daryl McCullough
>ORA Corp. 
>Ithaca, NY

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: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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