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Article 2812 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: recipes
Message-ID: <1992Jan16.234048.15503@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <1992Jan14.202806.29986@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <DIRISH.92Jan16121959@jeeves.math.utah.edu> <1992Jan16.153122.2430@arizona.edu>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 92 23:40:48 GMT
Lines: 20

In article <1992Jan16.153122.2430@arizona.edu> bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs) writes:

>  Okay, look.  When you speak of a "recipe", there are three things
>you could conceivably mean:
>
>	1) A piece of paper with marks on it.
>	2) A string of symbols from some finite alphabet.
>	3) A set of instructions for manipulating foodstuff.
>  It's a bad example.  It's confusing and it causes pointless
>arguments.  Please find a better example.

You can say analogous things about programs.  That makes it an
appropriate example for an argument by analogy.  (Is a program
purely syntactic, or not?  Yes and no, in precisely the same ways
that a recipe is and isn't.)

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


