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From: daryl@oravax.UUCP (Steven Daryl McCullough)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Some thoughts on the Searle controversy
Summary: All programs have an operational semantics, which may
	 or may not bear any relation to English semantics.
Message-ID: <1597@oravax.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jul 90 21:58:24 GMT
References: <601@ntpdvp1.UUCP> <4977@milton.u.washington.edu> <603@ntpdvp1.UUCP>
Organization: Odyssey Research Associates, Ithaca NY
Lines: 39

In article <603@ntpdvp1.UUCP>, kenp@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Ken Presting) writes:

> So the program is not just "pure syntax" - at least some of the
> expressions in the program have the same meaning as ordinary English
> expressions.

Ken, when you first mentioned your objection to the premise that
programs are "pure syntax, without semantics", I assumed that you had
in mind the operational semantics of the programming language; that
is, the way the machine executes programs written in the language.
Every programming language that can be compiled or interpreted must
have an operational semantics, and so every program automatically has
a semantic, as well as a syntactic, component.

However, you seem to be saying something stronger here; that programs
can be given some kind of linguistic meaning, in the way that English
sentences can. Although this is undoubtedly true, this meaning is not,
in my opinion, inherent in the program, but is imposed on the program
by the user.

For example, take an expert system for medical diagnosis. When the
expert system prints out a message like "The patient shows indications
of suffering from Lyme disease" (or whatever), this string of
characters can be given its usual English interpretation. However,
this interpretation is not the only interpretation possible; for
instance, the inputs and outputs can be interpreted as integers, and
then the program can then be interpreted as computing some
tremendously complicated recursive function. It is quite possible for
two or more interpretations of a program's output to be correct
simultaneously.

Because the interpretation of a program is not unique, I believe that,
for anyone to demonstrate that they have an artificially intelligent
machine, it is not enough to give the machine, or the program---one
must also give the proper *interpretation* of the inputs and outputs.
A program may be intelligent according to some interpretations, and
not according to others.

Daryl McCullough