Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!cornell!oravax!daryl
From: daryl@oravax.UUCP (Steven Daryl McCullough)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Some thoughts on the Searle controversy
Summary: filler
Message-ID: <1613@oravax.UUCP>
Date: 26 Jul 90 03:09:09 GMT
References: <611@ntpdvp1.UUCP>
Organization: Odyssey Research Associates, Ithaca NY
Lines: 31

In article <611@ntpdvp1.UUCP>, kenp@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Ken Presting) writes:
> I diagree with both of these positions.  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.
> ...
> The interpretation of the program's *data* is a very different issue from
> the interpretation of the *source code*.  How to interpret formatted data
> is the "symbol grounding problem", and solving it is probably equivalent
> to defining "intelligence".

Ken, it is possible that (inadvertently 8^) you are agreeing with me
in these paragraphs. In the first place, the semantics of the
programming language provides what I was calling the program's
"operational semantics". In the second place, the meaning of the data
manipulated by the program, was what I may have called the
"real-world" semantics of the program. (As Gary Forbis points out, it
is quite arbitrary to divide a system into "program" and "data"--- the
data can be hard-coded into the program, and contrarily, the program
may be created by starting with an interpreter and feeding the
instructions in as data.)

What I believe about "symbol grounding" is that it doesn't happen; at
least not in a unique way---there will *always* be more than one
legitimate interpretation of data (either in a computer, or in a human
brain).

Daryl McCullough

P.S. Thanks for the reasonable tone of your recent postings; it seemed
for a while that the exchanges were getting angry. Maybe it was my
imagination.