From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!jupiter!morgan.ucs.mun.ca!nstn.ns.ca!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!spool.mu.edu!agate!stanford.edu!rutgers!ub!galileo.cc.rochester.edu!rochester!yamauchi Tue Nov 26 12:32:10 EST 1991
Article 1567 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Xref: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca rec.arts.books:10594 sci.philosophy.tech:1100 comp.ai.philosophy:1567
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!jupiter!morgan.ucs.mun.ca!nstn.ns.ca!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!spool.mu.edu!agate!stanford.edu!rutgers!ub!galileo.cc.rochester.edu!rochester!yamauchi
>From: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle (was Re: Daniel Dennett (was Re: Comme
Message-ID: <YAMAUCHI.91Nov25000101@indigo.cs.rochester.edu>
Date: 25 Nov 91 05:01:01 GMT
References: <1991Nov14.223348.4076@milton.u.washington.edu>
	<MATT.91Nov24000158@physics.berkeley.edu>
	<1991Nov24.195230.5843@husc3.harvard.edu>
Sender: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi)
Followup-To: sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Organization: University of Rochester
Lines: 42
In-Reply-To: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu's message of 25 Nov 91 00:52:29 GMT
Nntp-Posting-Host: indigo.cs.rochester.edu


Note that rec.arts.books has been removed from followups.

In article <1991Nov24.195230.5843@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>In article <MATT.91Nov24000158@physics.berkeley.edu> 
>matt@physics.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern) writes:
>MA:
>>It isn't terribly clear to me what kind of system could possibly do
>>anything other than symbolic manipulation, defined so expansively.
>>This argument makes me nervous just because it is so terribly broad:
>>if an argument seems to apply to everything, it suggests to me that
>>there is a logical flaw in it somewhere.

>A symbol is an iconic or a substitutive sign, something that stands for
>something else, *aliquid stat pro aliquo*.  A C function is a symbol
>standing for an assembly language algorithm, and, eventually, for a
>sequence of machine language instructions, in virtue of your system's
>compilers.  Pray tell, what part of the computer hardware or software could
>make it stand for something outside the machine, as signs used by humans
>stand for things in virtue of their meanings?

Well, maybe we're getting somewhere now...

So would you call a "syntactic" symbol one which just refers to
something inside the computer hardware/software and a "semantic"
symbol one which refers to something outside the computer?

In that case, consider a robot vision system.  The robot looks down on
a table covered with tools.  It's vision system identifies the various
tools (hammer, screwdriver, wrench) and stores information about their
position and orientation in the robot's memory.  These symbols (e.g.
"hammer (10, 50, pi)") now refer to an object that exists in the real
world.  If I move the hammer, the corresponding symbolic information
will also change as the robot perceives the hammer's new position and
orientation.  Thus by the definition above, these "symbols" now have
"semantics" as well as "syntax".
--
_______________________________________________________________________________

Brian Yamauchi				NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory
yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu		Robotic Intelligence Group
_______________________________________________________________________________


