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Article 4046 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: forbis@milton.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <1992Feb26.193109.6137@u.washington.edu>
Date: 26 Feb 92 19:31:09 GMT
References: <1992Feb24.171942.10981@psych.toronto.edu> <450@tdatirv.UUCP> <1992Feb26.172245.10210@psych.toronto.edu>
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In article <1992Feb26.172245.10210@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>In article <450@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>>In article <1992Feb24.171942.10981@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>>
>>|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*.  
>
>Of course there is. That's wy the distinction is universally held.
>Consider:
>   The boy kicked the ball to the girl.
>   A monster pinned the prince to the wall.
>
>They have the same syntax, but different semantics. Now consider:

Depending upon how one views "syntax" this may be true.  I don't consider the
two to have the same syntax though they have the same syntatic form.  The
major differences are the words used.  If the words had been the same would
you still claim they had different semantics?

Now consider the sentence:

   There you go again.

Depending upon context this sentence will have different semantics.  But the
context is provided by other formal constructs or is ambigious.  If the context
is ambigious then so is the semantics.
 

>   Jack gave the box to the girl.
>   The girl was given the box by Jack.
>  
>They have the same semantics but different syntax.

That there may be a many to one or even many to many mapping between syntax
and semantics does not deny that there is such a map.  Given no further
context, these two sentences are perfectly parsable by many current systems.

Several years ago I played about with a tiny parser I extracted from a book
by Michael Dyer based upon the work of Roger Shank (Which formed the concepts
Searle was trying to argue against.)  It would convert both these sentences
to the same (similar) lisp lists.

>It's very simple. What might you be on about?
>Now ots up to you, or some AI-ist, to demonstrate to me that one
>can be reduced to the other. 
>-- 
>Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
>Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
>University of Toronto
>---------------------

--gary forbis@u.washington.


