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Article 1387 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Daniel Dennett (was Re: Commenting on the pos
Message-ID: <1991Nov18.175322.5587@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 18 Nov 91 22:53:20 GMT
References: <JMC.91Nov17135110@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> <1991Nov17.190935.5546@husc3.harvard.edu> <1991Nov18.152531.4246@newcastle.ac.uk>
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In article <1991Nov18.152531.4246@newcastle.ac.uk> 
Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes:

>zeleny@brauer.harvard.edu 
(Mikhail Zeleny) writes (to John McCarthy):

MZ:
>>                     ...   I said that any AI researcher stands in need of
>>an adequate semantical theory that would characterize the relevant
>>relations of expressing and denoting, and could be implemented by a finite
>>state automaton, and that, so far, you have failed to come up with an
>>answer to this challenge.

CH:
>Um, what's wrong with the following scenario?  Knowledge acquisition
>consists of the registering of primary sensory data by a neural net,
>that organizes it and finds regularities.  These regularities can be
>thought of as loci in a concept space, with fuzzy boundaries; as more
>input is processed, the inherent ambiguity is reduced.  When two loci
>are sufficiently distinguishable (the ambiguity between them crosses
>an arbitrary threshold), they are understood as distinct, and treated
>as points rather than balls (much as very small open intervals on the
>real line can be approximated as points).

Let's assume the above for the sake of argument.

CH:
>Symbols are used to refer to these points, and to structures among
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>them (and for other things); hence denotation.  Structures of symbols
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>are used to denote these points, and structures among them (and
>other things); hence expression (a la data base query languages).
>The only difficulty with finite automata is that they limit the ultimate
>granularity when concepts are being refined; but since there is only
>a finite amount of time per person, and most of that is not used in
>organization, this seldom poses a problem.

Sorry, this just won't do.  I asked for a theory that would *characterize*
the relations of expressing and denoting, i.e. in part explain just what it
takes for a symbol-token to refer to anything at all; this means that you
can't take the relation of reference as primitive.

CH:
>Consciousness is the property that some of the input to the "mind"
>consists of some of the internal workings of the mind (there is a
>feedback loop here, as well as the one relating actions to senses).
>The formalization of knowledge consists of examining regularities
>in actions and the internal workings of the mind, and deriving a
>structure that roughly corresponds to it; when any remaining
>ambiguity is thrown away, it is a formal model.  Is this the sort
>of thing you mean?

At this point I am not interested in a theory of consciousness.  Give me a
semantical theory of your choice, and I'll either explain why it can't be
implemented by a finite-state automaton, or is inadequate for the purpose
of characterizing the relation of denoting.

>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk      Computing Lab, U of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> "Happiness: a good account, a good compiler, and a good definition."


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