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From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Sci. American AI debate
Message-ID: <6049@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 6 Jan 90 16:11:12 GMT
References: <2818@client1.DRETOR.UUCP>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 21

From article <2818@client1.DRETOR.UUCP>, by mmt@client1.DRETOR.UUCP (Martin Taylor):

>Searle claims it to be prima facie obvious that syntax cannot give rise
>to semantics.  I find this claim analogous to a claim that a set of distances
>between points cannot be enough to allow one to determine the placement
>of the points in an N-dimensional space.

Yes, it certainly is not obvious.  Take two formal syntactic systems,
each of which characterizes a set of statements, and associate to each
statement of the first some statement of the second system as its
interpretation.  We now have a formal semantic system constituted from
syntactic systems.

The argument gains some of its plausibility from an equivocation on the
term `formal', which is sometimes used in its proper sense as meaning
"characterized by reference only to form" and sometimes as meaning
"uninterpreted or not semantic".  (Logicians who study formal semantics
would certainly be surprised to learn that the name of their field is an
oxymoron, as it would be if `formal' meant "not semantic".)

				Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu