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Article 2391 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Causes and Reasons
Summary: implementation = interpretation + action
Keywords: intensionality, agency, causation, syntax, semantics, pragmatics
Message-ID: <1991Dec23.185045.6898@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 23 Dec 91 23:50:42 GMT
References: <1991Dec19.133719.22212@oracorp.com> <1991Dec23.041134.6879@husc3.harvard.edu> <1991Dec23.210052.25960@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
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In article <1991Dec23.210052.25960@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> 
chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:

>In article <1991Dec23.041134.6879@husc3.harvard.edu> 
>zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

MZ:
>>You might have noticed that Chalmers has wisely chosen to abstain from
>>maintaining his ridiculous claims about the causal powers of programs.

DC:
>Only because the point was made, and there's no need to beat it to death.
>Your last post on the subject demonstrated a sufficiently gross
>misunderstanding of the notions of supervenience and implementation
>that there was little point in continuing the discussion.

I see my use of the term `supervenience' as wholly consistent with its
introduction in modern philosophical discourse by R.M.Hare, as well as its
use in the philosophy of mind by Donald Davidson; should you care to
substantiate your accusation, I would be happy to supply a more precise
reference to the sorces.

MZ:
>>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.

DC:
>For the last time: *of course* logical structure isn't sufficient for
>causal structure.  That's why we need the notion of implementation.
>Implementation is a *relation* between syntactic structures (programs)
>and physical systems; and by the very meaning of the term, a physical
>system only implements a given program if it has the right causal
>structure.

As for the notion of implementation, I use it in the informal software
engineering sense, being unaware of any other relevant use.  If you wish to
restrict it i n the above way, that's fine, as long as you don't impute a
nonexistent causal structure to a piece of paper with marks on it.  Once
again, the rightness of your causal structure is determined by whoever
determines the correctness of implementation.  If you fail to understand
the concept of intensionality, as defined above, that's OK too; I really
don't care whether you choose to delude yourself into thinking that your
"point" was made, and there's no need to beat it to death.

DC:
>From this post and others, it appears that your problem is a conflation
>of the notions of implementation (of a program in a physical system)
>and interpretation (of a formal system in a model).  Big mistake. The
>model-theoretic problems with interpretation are simply irrelevant to
>implementation.

>From this comment and others, it appears that your problem is a failure to
understand the difference between identity and dependence.  The
implementation of a program in a physical system *depends* on the
systematic semantic determination of the former, i.e. on the interpretation
of the syntax of the language in which it is written; it also depends on
the systematic pragmatic determination of the same, i.e. in relating its
illocutionary structure (procedure calls) to the physical processes within
the computer.  Both, taken together, constitute its implementation.  Both
require conscious agency, per my argument elsewhere.

>-- 
>Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
>Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
>"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


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: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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