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From: mps@duke.cs.duke.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: Re: Should AI be scientific?  If yes, how?
Message-ID: <8708281322.AA27689@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Date: Fri, 28-Aug-87 09:22:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: duke.8708281322.AA27689
Posted: Fri Aug 28 09:22:12 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Sep-87 06:13:31 EDT
References: <8708240436.AA19024@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <8708251656.AA14266@cs.utah.edu>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: duke!mps (Michael P. Smith)
Distribution: world
Organization: Duke University, Durham NC
Lines: 28
Keywords: Goedel, Turing, computability
Approved: ailist@stripe.sri.com
Summary: Huh?

In article <8708251656.AA14266@cs.utah.edu> cs.utah.edu!shebs@cs.utah.edu
(Stanley Shebs) writes:
>
>Goedel's and Turing's ghosts are looking over our shoulders.  We can't do
>conventional science because, unlike the physical universe, the computational
							     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>universe is wide open, and anything can compute anything.  Minute examination
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>of a particular program in execution tells one little more than what the
>programmer was thinking about when writing the program.
>
	[emphasis added]

Would you please explain this tantalizing remark?  Surely not every
formal system can compute every function (what about the ghost of
Chomsky?).  Are you alluding to the mutual emulatability of Turing
machines?  Or maybe the moral is functionalism (as philosophers use
the term): that in matters computational, it's form and not matter
that matters.  And how does Goedel fit in?  I suspect it's his
completeness theorem and not his incompleteness results you have in
mind.  Finally, how does the third sentence follow from the second?
Thanks.


"Just as a vessel is a place that can be carried around, so place is a
 vessel that cannot be carried around."		Aristotle

Michael P. Smith	ARPA:	mps@duke.cs.duke.edu