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Article 3328 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Viruses: alive?
Message-ID: <64458@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 31 Jan 92 15:09:34 GMT
References: <63805@netnews.upenn.edu> <1992Jan30.023404.6005@norton.com>
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Reply-To: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
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In-reply-to: brian@norton.com (Brian Yoder)

In article <1992Jan30.023404.6005@norton.com>, brian@norton (Brian Yoder) writes:
>Is your position then that definitions are not things that can be
>right/wrong?  Or are you just saying that the right way to determine
>a definition is not to appeal to authority?

My position is that understanding meaning is AI-complete.  Table lookup
has so far proven to be not strong enough.

>> It's easy to prove that dictionaries have their limits: look up the
>> definition of "dog".  [...]

>Aren't all of these "doglike-yet-not-dogs"?  The concept "dog" would
>seem to apply to each of these just fine, and so does the word
>associated with that concept.  What else would you call a non-living
>dog rather than "dead dog" or a a dog-shaped bit of stone but a "dog
>statue"?  The term "dog" would seem perfectly consistent with what my
>dictionary says.

It's consistent, but only based on your knowledge of how English works.
This is not something you can get from the dictionary definition itself.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu)


