From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aiai!jeff Thu Apr 16 11:33:59 EDT 1992
Article 5041 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: syntax and semantics
Message-ID: <6599@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 10 Apr 92 16:01:16 GMT
References: <1992Apr8.215800.18021@mp.cs.niu.edu> <92099.194744JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu> <1992Apr9.174840.3407@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
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In article <1992Apr9.174840.3407@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>In article <92099.194744JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu> 
>JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu writes:
>>The point is not that what computers do is _necessarily_ meaningless, just
>>that, at the machine level, there is no inherent meaning (or reference).  It
>>is we who come along and project reference upon the formal manipulations that
>>the computer has carried out. 

>  I don't agree with this analysis (if I understand it).  In a brain,
>at the neuron level, there is also no inherent meaning or reference.

He shouldn't have said "at the machine level", because that obscures
the point by making it seem analogous to "at the neuron level".


