From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uwm.edu!wupost!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!cam Mon Mar  9 18:33:53 EST 1992
Article 4140 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Reference (was re: Multiple Personality Disorder and Strong AI)
Message-ID: <18595@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 28 Feb 92 18:03:30 GMT
References: <1992Feb25.182526.12698@oracorp.com>
Organization: Edinburgh University
Lines: 48

In article <1992Feb25.182526.12698@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com writes:
>Christopher Green writes (in response to Stanley Friesen):

>   2. Syntax is not sufficient for semantics....a conceptual truth....
>   3. Computer programs are entirely defined by their formal, or syntactical

>SF:
>    As I have already stated, I question assumptions 2 and 3.

>CG: 

>> I can't conceive of what you object to in 3. It doesn't need
>> evidence.  It's utterly analytic. Learning to program, even a little,
>> should convince you.

>I think you (like Searle before you) are equivocating on the use of
>the phrase "programs are purely syntactic". A program is certainly a
>syntactic object; it is a formal description, or specification, of a
>class of systems (the "implementations" of the program). Learning to
>program involves (at least in part) learning the syntax of a
>programming language. However, the fact that a program is syntactic
>(as is any formal description) does not mean that the implementations
>of the program are purely syntactic.

Margaret Boden takes a similar position in what she calls the "English
Reply" to the Chinese Room (which may originally be due to Aaron
Sloman), which I think can be found in her "Philosophy of AI". "English"
here refers, confusingly enough, not to English vs Chinese, but to the
(subset of) English which the homuncular Searle in the Chinese Room must
understand in order to follow the instructions, i.e., the program. In
other words, to run a program a computer must understand its own order
code, in the sense of knowing what it is being instructed to do. This
can be regarded as a very elementary and primitive form of semantics or
understanding, i.e., the Chinese Room is not _totally_ free of
semantics. One is then invited to suppose that once this sematic Trojan
Horse has sneaked into the Chinese Room, that more advanced kinds of
semantics and understanding can be contrived by elaborating it, much as
one can elaborate (acceptable approximations to) transcendental
functions from a handful of elementary Boolean operations.

On the other hand, I think it remains true that what a program does is
to transform some input data into some output data, and that this
transformation can only be purely syntactic. This seems to me to pull
the rug out from under the "English reply". Anyone care to comment?
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205


