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Article 2351 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Machine Translation (was re: Searle's response to silicon brain?)
Message-ID: <1991Dec21.111459.2302@arizona.edu>
>From: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Date: 21 Dec 91 11:14:58 MST
Reply-To: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
References: <40822@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1991Dec18.172040.3506@spss.com> <45303@mimsy.umd.edu> <1991Dec21.000014.6836@husc3.harvard.edu>
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Mikhail Zeleny:
>Simple.  Correct translation is a matter of finding an approximate synonym;
>synonymy is a semantic relation; if machines can't compute semantic
>relations, they can't translate anything.

Synonymy is a semantic relation, but it may correspond (by "coincidence")
to a syntactic relation, for example when translating from English
to Pig Latin.  So the conclusion does not follow.

MZ:
>The fact that semantic relations are non-recursive is a direct consequence
>of G\"odel's Second Incompleteness theorem.  In any language containing
>elementary arithmetic, as well as a recursive semantic relation "...
>expresses ...", we may apply the arithmetization trick to the said relation
>with predictable results.

This argument has been conclusively refuted many times.  I don't
feel like writing it out all over again.  

	-- Bill



