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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Searle and Radical Translation (was: Re: Searle and Biology)
Summary: real machines don't compute functions (or eat quiche)
Message-ID: <14441@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 28 Jul 90 00:46:36 GMT
References: <612@ntpdvp1.UUCP> <5362@puggsly.cme.nist.gov>
Sender: news@venera.isi.edu
Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute
Lines: 24

In article <5362@puggsly.cme.nist.gov> kohout@cme.nist.gov (Robert Kohout)
writes:
>
>In addition, I fail to see how real machines do not, in the technical sense,
>compute functions.

Well, my VAX is about as real a machine as you can get (for better or worse);
but when it is running UNIX, I do not think anyone would say it is computing
a function.  For one thing, it does not halt.  (At least it's not SUPPOSED to
halt, and halting is generally indicative of an error.)  The same is true of
any real-time control system.  While it is certainly true that such systems
have Turing-like functions as components, you cannot say that THE WHOLE THING
is such a function.

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