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Article 1523 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Daniel Dennett (was Re: Commenting on the pos
Message-ID: <1991Nov23.024440.5800@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 23 Nov 91 07:44:38 GMT
References: <JMC.91Nov17135110@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> <1991Nov17.190935.5546@husc3.harvard.edu> <DAVIS.91Nov19224009@passy.ilog.fr>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
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In article <DAVIS.91Nov19224009@passy.ilog.fr> 
davis@passy.ilog.fr (Harley Davis) writes:

>In article <1991Nov18.175322.5587@husc3.harvard.edu> 
>zeleny@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

MZ:
>>        [...]               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.
>>
>>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.

HD:
>What makes you think that real human beings succeed in denoting,
>according to your high standards for this esteemed relation?  Surely
>you can't just say that *by definition* humans denote, thus
>automatically excluding any non-humans from the privileged caste of
>denoters a priori?  On the other hand, you don't want to say that we
>empirically determine that we denote, because then you must admit that
>a computer which passes the Turing Test also denotes.  So what makes
>you so sure that denoting is crucial for intelligence?

The inadequacy of the Turing test has been covered elsewhere by Jeff
Dalton; accordingly, I'll limit myself to a straightforward answer.  The
evidence for my claim that we succeed in denoting sensible objects must
necessarily be empirical, as the relation of denoting is itself contingent
and a posteriori.  On the other hand, I believe that our capability to
reliably denote mathematical objects (substitute `forms' or `structures' if
you are a follower of Bourbaki or Saunders MacLane, respectively; if you
are a formalist, this discussion is quite pointless), or to reliably
express meanings, is a priori, directly verifiable by introspection, and
so, at least to me, much less open to doubt.

'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`
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: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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