From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!christo Mon Mar  9 18:33:48 EST 1992
Article 4132 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!christo
>From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Feb28.170150.14142@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <450@tdatirv.UUCP> <1992Feb26.172245.10210@psych.toronto.edu> <456@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1992 17:01:50 GMT

In article <456@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>
>Semantics *is* distinct from syntax, but it is *not* obvious that it cannot
>be *implemented* from a syntactic basis.  

"Chris, do an encore of the burden-of-proof argument!"

Sure thing Mr. Daemon!

What is not obvious is that it can. And since yourself admit that they
are patently different, the burden of proof is upon those who believe
that such an implementation is possible. 

"I believe that cats are Martian surveillance machines."
"Really? What evidnece do you have? They don't look like MSMs?"
"Ha! Fool! What evidence do you have that they're not? (Are you now,
   or have you ever been...."


>Derivation is not the same as
>identity.  A living thing is not merely a bag of chemicals undergoing a
>series of complex reactions, but that *is* how one is *implemented*.
>
>Is it really so hard to concieve of something being more than the sum of its
>parts?  Perhaps you have not studied enough biology - such phenomena are
>universal in that field.
>
>|It's very simple. What might you be on about?
>
>But your examples are ones that have long been solved *in* *computers*,
>so they do not in the least support Searle's position.
>
>And such surface structural differences are easily handled in any of
>Transformational Grammar or Relational Grammar or Functional Grammar,
>or Generative Grammar, or ...  (all of which are implementable on
>a computer).
>-- 
>---------------
>uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)
>


-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
---------------------


