From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael Thu Apr 16 11:33:43 EDT 1992
Article 5016 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael
>From: michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar)
Subject: Re: syntax and semantics
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <1992Apr4.061244.767@mp.cs.niu.edu> <92098.170625JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu> <1992Apr8.215800.18021@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Message-ID: <1992Apr9.204735.21732@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 20:47:35 GMT

In article <1992Apr8.215800.18021@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In article <92098.170625JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu> JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu writes:
>>In article <1992Apr4.061244.767@mp.cs.niu.edu>, rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil
>>Rickert) says:
>>> Would that Searle were that precise in his use of "syntactic".  But he
>>>also says that every thing a computer can do is syntactic, and this
>>>therefore includes computing averages and correlations of very imprecise
>>>floating point information.
>>>
>>    Are you suggesting that such computations are _not_ syntactic?  In what
>>manner would they not be?  From what I understand, whatever the computer does
>>_is_ "formal" and "precise", although we may interpret its output as
>>_meaning_ something imprecise.
>
> It is of course possible to view floating point arithmetic as formal and
>precise.  If you view it that way the floating point numbers satisfy some
>very strange and quite complex algebraic properties.  Moreover the
>algebra of floating point numbers as implemented on one machine is quite
>different from the algebra as implemented on a different machine.  All in
>all, when viewed this way floating point numbers are useless curiosities.
>However if view as approximations to real numbers then we have a much
>simpler algebra (the algebra of real numbers), we have consistency between
>different machines, but the numbers are no longer precise, since they are
>approximations.

This is *not* the issue.  The computation *is* formal, and *is* precise.  The
fact that the result you get does not always jibe from machine to machine
is *not* to say that the computations themselves are not precise and formal.


> By all means consider everything done by a computer as formal manipulations
>with no semantic content.  That is your loss, not mine. 

Um...this isn't an argument...

> And by the way,
>I suggest that you ask your bank to transfer all of your accounts to me.  They
>are clearly useless to you, since they are mere formal manipulations of a
>computer without semantic content.  But once transferred to me I suspect I
>can squeeze enough semantics out of them to buy myself a few good meals.

Come on, Neil, surely you know better than this!  Money is not intrisically
"in" the bank's program.  Heck, if everyone decided to interpret *your*
bank's computer as playing chess instead, how would you prove them wrong?
Grab a wad of greenbacks out of its RAM?

As always, the instantiated program can be *interpreted* as having meaning.
Whether that meaning is intrinsic to the program, however, is the question.

- michael




