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Article 1589 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle (was Re: Daniel Dennett (was Re: Comme
Message-ID: <5689@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 25 Nov 91 19:24:11 GMT
References: <1991Nov14.223348.4076@milton.u.washington.edu> <MATT.91Nov24000158@physics.berkeley.edu> <1991Nov24.195230.5843@husc3.harvard.edu> <JMC.91Nov24194704@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 25

In article <JMC.91Nov24194704@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>I'm puzzled about Zeleny's message addressed to my work, but I
>understand (assuming the Latin is just a decoration) where he says
>
>     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?
>
>Let's start out simple.  The reading of a digital thermometer
>"stands for" the temperature.

Because we so interpret it.  The number 32 also stands for a
temperature, if we want it to.  It might be argued that there's
a direct causal connection between the thermometer and the
temperature.  But so what?  If there's a causal connection
between the word "temperature" and physical temperature (so
to speak) that makes the word stand for the phenomenon, it's
surely not the same causal connection as that between the
reading of a thermometer and the same phenomenon.


