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From: forbis@milton.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Some thoughts on the Searle controversy
Message-ID: <5483@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 25 Jul 90 02:46:17 GMT
References: <611@ntpdvp1.UUCP>
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 75

Ken; I realize I am not in either Daryl's or your league.  If I cover
material I should be familiar with but am not it is becuase most of
what I say is from my own introspection rather than formal training.
Given this, I still will ask for clarification.

In article <611@ntpdvp1.UUCP> kenp@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Ken Presting) writes:
>I want to consider (for the moment) NOT the behavior of the computer which
>prints the sentences, but rather the meaning of the program which does the
>printing.  Take the instruction:
>
>      printf("The patient shows ... Lyme disease\n");
>
>I am NOT saying that the quoted string refers to a patient or a disease.
>The crucial observation here is that both English and C include *quoted
>strings* as syntactical elements.

I understand.  I think I will refer back to this.  No, I know I will refer
back to this.  I suspect that much of my concern is that the programmer 
meant something by the quoted text in the same way I mean something with
this text.  I'm not sure I like having someone tell me any interpretation
of this text is as good as any other interpretation provided there can
be successful semantic mapping.  I think I am agreeing with you.

>I think that the semantics of the
>programming language include enough information to completely determine
>the intelligence of the machines that implement any given program.

I am taken aback.  This seems a lot stronger than anything I have claimed.
I like it but have reservations (still relating to that which I will refer.)

>I should
>probably add that the issue is by no means straightforward - run-time
>libraries, internal data representations, peripheral hardware addresses, ad
>nauseum, make the semantics of programming languages as complex as natural
>languages.  Sure, the syntax is easy.  But semantics is a lot harder.

With the aside that I doubt any English word is given the formality of any
particular machine implimentation, I agree.  I'm not sure my symbols are
grounded but they are heavily loaded.

>The interpretation of the program's *data* is a very different issue from
>the interpretation of the *source code*.

Is it just me?  I think of *data* and *source code* as one and the same.
One program's source code is another program's data.  

>How to interpret formatted data
>is the "symbol grounding problem", and solving it is probably equivalent
>to defining "intelligence".

Why am I not conserned about the "symbol grounding problem"?  Is there more
to it than the ability to regurgitate contextually correct strings of text?
That is, provided you do not understand me to be refuting what you think I
mean, I mean exactly what you think and for you to state otherwise has no
meaning.

Now back to the single line program fragment.  Given that it is assumed this
fragment would appear within a program at exactly the place where it would
be appropriate to make the statement "The patient shows ... Lyme disease,"
why should I assume the utterance refers to someone other than "the patient"
as defined by the context within which the statement was made or that
"Lyme disease" refers to something else?  Within the context of a program
a quoted string has some semantics attached and specified and some which are 
attached but unspecified.  These unspecified semantics are determined 
consentually by the parties involved as they continue the dialogue in what
appears to them contextually correct symbols(which I take to be a proof of
the attachment of the correct semantics to the utterances.)

Are semantics relativistic? 


>Ken Presting   ("'God' is an unresolved external reference")

Gary ("God, I used 'context' and 'semantic' a lot in this text.")
"Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery."