Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!jeff
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Hayes vs. Searle
Message-ID: <2752@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 12 Jun 90 15:27:46 GMT
References: <16875@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2629@skye.ed.ac.uk> <2687@skye.ed.ac.uk> <586@dlogics.COM>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 27

In article <586@dlogics.COM> dsa@dlogics.COM (David Angulo) writes:
>In article <2687@skye.ed.ac.uk>, jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>> Not bad, but a program could be printed, and there's the book.

>No, a program couldn't be printed (if by program you mean a list of
>questions and their answers) because such a book or program is always
>incomplete.

By "program" I do not mean a list of questions and their answers
and neither does Searle.

Now, perhaps there are some things that can't be printed that might
count as programs.  But if there are infinite programs, finite
computers couldn't run them.

On the other hand, finite "always incomplete" programs are certainly
possible, because they might always be reprogramming themselves by
generating new data structures.  (Data manipulations can often be seen
as interpreting the data as a program.)

>To prove this, all you have to do is ask in English all of
>the possible addition problems.  This is infinite [...]

That's one reason why programs that do addition aren't written that
way.

-- Jeff