Indeed. To make such a claim demonstrates a misunderstanding of what formalism is. When human beings develop formalisms, they do so on the basis of semantics. I

Indeed. To make such a claim demonstrates a misunderstanding of what formalism is. When human beings develop formalisms, they do so on the basis of semantics. If I wish to formalize something, I must first have a relevant understanding of the nature of the thing, or things involved and the relations between them. The development of formalism is a translation of semantics into syntactic rules devoid of meaning. Doing so allows us to mechanize reasoning. Algebra is an example of an early move in this direction. Something we learn in mathematics is that two theories concerning different objects can be formally equivalent. Computers are strictly devoid of semantics. They are, at best, purely syntactic machines. There is no amount of syntax than can ever lead to semantics. Strictly speaking, computers don't even compute. Further reading: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/10/do-machines-compute-functions.html http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/10/do-machines-compute-...