From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Tue May 12 15:49:00 EDT 1992
Article 5407 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima
>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: syntax and semantics
Message-ID: <2@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 4 May 92 22:28:07 GMT
References: <1992Apr8.215800.18021@mp.cs.niu.edu> <92099.194744JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu> <1992Apr9.174840.3407@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <5674@mtecv2.mty.itesm.mx>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 26


|Just one thing: How do you know? I mean, if you disect a living brain,
|you won't find any meaning or reference either.

But that was the whole point!  At that level semantics cannot be found.

|We can't equate neurons
|to microprocessors, since we don't know yet how a neuron works.

WRONG me bucko!   We *do* know, in large part, how a neuron works.
We may not know the smallest details, but then that is true for every
branch of science - we do not know all there is to know about particle
physics either.

|Maybe a
|full explanation of the function of a neuron will require the
|introduction of concepts like 'meaning'.

Not hardly, that would be inconsistant with what we know of neurons
already.  We can, in fact, build a circuit that almost exactly matches
a neuron's behavior (exept for fan-in/fan-out).  Of course this circuit
is hardly what we would normally call a microprocessor.
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)



