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Article 5021 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: syntax and semantics
Message-ID: <1992Apr10.012931.5755@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: 10 Apr 92 01:29:31 GMT
References: <92098.170625JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu> <1992Apr8.215800.18021@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1992Apr9.204735.21732@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Lines: 49

In article <1992Apr9.204735.21732@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>In article <1992Apr8.215800.18021@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>[comments about floating point computations]

>This is *not* the issue.  The computation *is* formal, and *is* precise.  The
>fact that the result you get does not always jibe from machine to machine
>is *not* to say that the computations themselves are not precise and formal.

 You can look at it two ways.

 Either (a) floating point computations are precise, completely inconsistent
	    between hardware platforms, and devoid of any apparent meaning
	    or use

or      (b) Approximate (i.em imprecise), highly consistent between hardware
	    platforms, and very useful.

  I prefer interpretation (b).  That you insist on interpretation (a) is
your loss.

>> And by the way,
>>I suggest that you ask your bank to transfer all of your accounts to me.  They
>>are clearly useless to you, since they are mere formal manipulations of a
>>computer without semantic content.  But once transferred to me I suspect I
>>can squeeze enough semantics out of them to buy myself a few good meals.
>
>Come on, Neil, surely you know better than this!  Money is not intrisically
>"in" the bank's program.  Heck, if everyone decided to interpret *your*
>bank's computer as playing chess instead, how would you prove them wrong?

 Come on, Michael, surely you know better than that.  Do you really think
that the bank vaults hold anything close to the amount of green paper
that would be needed if we dispensed with electronic money management.
What exactly is an IMF 'SDR' (special drawing rights) other than syntax.
For that matter, why is the green paper intrinsically different from
syntax.  Money reduced to nothing but syntax when the gold standard was
dropped.

>Grab a wad of greenbacks out of its RAM?

 If you are implying that the disk drives, magnetic tape, links to
communication networks, etc, are not part of the computer system, then your
view of computers is far too narrow.

-- 
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940


