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From: bayers@kodak.UUCP (mitch bayersdorfer)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,comp.ai,comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Re: Infinite alphabets - (Turing via Berke)
Message-ID: <971@kodak.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Dec-69 18:59:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: kodak.971
Posted: Wed Dec 31 18:59:59 1969
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Oct-87 23:56:35 EDT
References: <154@Aragorn.UUCP> <114400001@exunido.UUCP> <364@su-russell.ARPA> <17@krafla.UUCP> <8583@shemp.UCLA.EDU> <417@russell.STANFORD.EDU>
Reply-To: bayers@kodak.UUCP (mitch bayersdorfer)
Organization: Eastman Kodak Co, Rochester, NY
Lines: 31
Xref: mnetor sci.lang:1559 comp.ai:894 comp.ai.neural-nets:5

In article <417@russell.STANFORD.EDU> nakashim@russell.UUCP (Hideyuki Nakashima) writes:
>
>The comparison between Europian alphabetical system and Chinese
>character system is very interesting.  Chinese can DO have infinite
>characters.  What they do is to assign one character to each concept.
>Of course, they don't have infinite characters now.  But I say it is
>possible to have them if they want.
>
>Hideyuki Nakashima
>CSLI and ETL
>nakashima@csli.stanford.edu (until Aug. 1988)
>nakashima%etl.jp@relay.cs.net (afterwards)

I don't mean to make a reductio ad adsurdum, but can any alphabet which
a given human can perceive be truely infinite?  Given that human beings have 
a finite (but very large) number of neurons in their visual and cerebral
cortex, and that any distinct alphabetic character would exceed the 
thresholds of an enumerable permutation of those neurons, mustn't there
be only a finite number of characters (and concepts?).  I am assuming that 
neural thresholds for a certain learned concept are relatively constant.  If
another concept produces the same permutation, but only to a greater 
degree, then couldn't that be reduced down to two concepts-- one a measure 
of the concept, and the other a measure of its degree?  

               - Mitch Bayersdorfer

...{}!rochester!kodak!bayers

"The above does not represent the views of the Eastman Kodak Company or
its management."