From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wupost!darwin.sura.net!gatech!gsusgi1.gsu.edu!gsusgi1.gsu.edu!accran Wed Feb  5 11:55:54 EST 1992
Article 3366 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: accran@gsusgi2.gsu.edu (Robert Nehmer)
Subject: Re: Is understanding algorithmic?
Message-ID: <accran.696980112@gsusgi1.gsu.edu>
Organization: Georgia State University
Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1992 21:35:12 GMT
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References: <1992Jan26.014607.8073@husc3.harvard.edu> <6523@pkmab.se> <1992Jan28.122457.8161@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Feb1.015307.18388@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>

boroson@spot.Colorado.EDU (BOROSON BRAM S) writes:

>In article <1992Jan28.122457.8161@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

[Deletions]

>>
>>If, on one hand, one identifies the neural pulses as purely denotative
>>signs, ones that refer without expressing, one would be forced to postulate
>>a causal relation in virtue of which these signs denote, stipulating that
>>this causal relation is itself entirely immanent in nervous activity, in
>>direct contradiction to the fact that our language, allegedly founded
>>solely on such nervous activity, has no trouble referring to objects and
>>phenomena that occur outside of the latter.  For, on one hand, if an entity
>>can be said to refer, the mechanism of such reference must be taken as
>>being wholly within the provenance of the entity in question, to the extent
>>that we are justified in ascribing the reference to the said entity, rather
>>than to the extrinsic factors of its relation to its environment; on the
>>other hand, once we reject solipsism, we are forced to infer an external
>>reality of potential denotata, unconnected to our putative subject in any
>>manner that can be wholly subsumed by it.
>>
>There are no ``causal relations'' in anything, as Hume has shown.  Reference
>consists entirely of a correlation between information in neural pulses (etc.)
>and information in the outside world.  Of course we can refer to objects
>that do not exist (Centaurs, sets, etc.) but this is always by a combination
>and reshuffling of our ideas about objects that do exist.

>In this interpretation, reference *does* have to do with external entities,
>since this correlation of information would not exist without an external
>entity.  Reference is not a wholly internal affair.

I dont't follow the argument here. You seem to be giving an argument by 
analogy that since "causal relations :: reference" is not "true", then
"correlation :: reference". I don't interprete anyone as conflating causal
relations with reference here. Indeed, I see refernce as structural, rather
than causal. Yet even if the assertation that causal realtions were reference
was made, you argument does not follow. And if I were to grant the conclusion
and consider reference to correlate with a variety of objects/programs/
physical externalities, then I have changed my definition of reference and
lose its previous denotations and conotations. Hmm, a second order recursion
has just occured.

[Other items deleted]

Cheers
Nehmer
GSU - .sig file exists in theory, implementation is modal



