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Article 4971 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: syntax and semantics
Message-ID: <1992Apr8.010858.5398@news.media.mit.edu>
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Cc: minsky
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
References: <1992Apr03.164328.8107@spss.com> <1992Apr4.061244.767@mp.cs.niu.edu> <92098.170625JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu>
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 01:08:58 GMT
Lines: 23

In article <92098.170625JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu> <JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>In article <1992Apr4.061244.767@mp.cs.niu.edu>, rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil
>Rickert) says:
>>
>>In article <1992Apr03.164328.8107@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark           )
>>Rosenfelder
>>writes:
>>>
>>>Searle seems to use "syntactic" to mean "formal", or "manipulating...
>>>symbols [with] precisely stated rules."  "Semantics" he seems to equate
>>
>> Would that Searle were that precise in his use of "syntactic".  But he
>>also says that every thing a computer can do is syntactic, and this
>>therefore includes computing averages and correlations of very imprecise
>>floating point information.
>>
>    Are you suggesting that such computations are _not_ syntactic?  In what
>manner would they not be?  From what I understand, whatever the computer does
>_is_ "formal" and "precise", although we may interpret its output as
>_meaning_ something imprecise.

Nonsense. What the computer does is what it does, just like a brain.
It is _you_ who may interpret what it is doing as formal or precise.


