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Article 5747 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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OM!silber
>From: silber@orfeo.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Silber)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: 'analog' vs. 'digital' : Re: Grounding: Real vs. Virtual
Date: 19 May 1992 18:22:29 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
Lines: 29
Message-ID: <l1ihr5INNr6k@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
References: <1992May19.003821.9450@Princeton.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: orfeo
Keywords: symbol, analog, Turing Test, robotics

In article <1992May19.003821.9450@Princeton.EDU> harnad@shine.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad) writes:
>...
>Computational equivalence is not the same
>as identity.
>
>The world of objects is analog; substantial parts of the nervous
>system (and its tranducers/effectors necessarily) are analog.
>Computer simulations of them can help us to understand,
>predict and explain both the world of objects and the nervous
>system, but not by BEING the world or the brain, just by being
>a formal model of them.

 The 'analog' vs. digital dichotomy is a transformation of the
 wave vs. particle dichotomy; real reality requires both aspects,
 and a phenomenon exhibiting , in some guise or incarnation, more of
 one of these aspects than another cannot be disqualified from the
 status, 'real'.
>
>The meanings of the symbols in a pure symbol system (whether it is
>interpretable as a furnace, a plane, a solar system, a nervous system,
>a world, or all of the foregoing together) are ungrounded. Symbol

 As in my last comment on S.H.'s thesis, I maintain that this 
 proposition is conditional; it depends upon the HISTORY of the pure
 symbol system at issue; we can imagine a mind-dump which divorces our
 instantaneous consciousness from the sensory apparatus which was
 crucial to its development, such a pure symbol system IS grounded.




