From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Wed Feb 26 12:54:45 EST 1992
Article 4032 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <450@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 25 Feb 92 17:55:46 GMT
References: <1992Feb23.071810.16573@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <1992Feb24.044654.12505@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Feb24.083303.20762@u.washington.edu> <1992Feb24.171942.10981@psych.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 27

In article <1992Feb24.171942.10981@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
|In article <1992Feb24.083303.20762@u.washington.edu> forbis@milton.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis) writes:
|>
|>It seems to me that one has to first accept the premises that semantics is
|>not reducable to syntax and machines only manipulating symbols acording
|>to syntatic rules.  If one truely accept that the machine produced behavior
|>indistinguishable from human who understand then it is not obvious that
|>both of these presises can still be consistantly held.
|
|Really? To me the onus seems to be on he who claims that, against all the
|obvious evidence, that semantics is really syntax in disguise.

Hold on there a moment!  He said that '*both* of these premises cannot still
be consistantly held'  You then immediately jump to the conclusion that he
would reject the first!!  This is *not* necessarily so, perhaps one would
be led to reject the second.

|In the 
|absence of such a proof, there's no particular reason to believe they
|are.

Then again there is no reason to believe they are *not*.  So it becomes a
matter for further research to determine which way it is.  *Either* belief
is, at present, unfounded.
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)


