Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!tank!eecae!netnews.upenn.edu!linc.cis.upenn.edu!hardt
From: hardt@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Dan Hardt)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: What is a Symbol System?
Keywords: computation, symbol manipulation, syntax, formality
Message-ID: <17189@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 20 Nov 89 22:06:40 GMT
References: <11640@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu
Reply-To: hardt@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Dan Hardt)
Organization: University of Pennsylvania
Lines: 12

I'm not sure how you can sharply distinguish between a system
that is interpretable as rule-governed and one that is
explicitly rule governed.  Perhaps you have in mind a connectionist
network on the one hand, where what is syntactically represented might
be things like weights of connections, and the rules only emerge from the
overall behavior of the system; on the other hand, an expert system,
where the rules are all explicitly written in some logical notation.
Would you characterize the connectionist network as only interpretable
as being rule-governed, and the expert system as being explicitly 
rule governed?  If it is that sort of distinction you have in mind,
I'm not sure how the criteria given allow you make it.  If fact, I
wonder how you can rule out any turing machine.