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Please explain how to tell if some being "has semantics". Suppose we encounter some alien made out of crystal and metal, but arranged in organic looking struct
by jedharris 9y ago
Please explain how to tell if some being "has semantics". Suppose we encounter some alien made out of crystal and metal, but arranged in organic looking structures. We work out how to communicate, rather roughly (like Google Translate). They won't talk about their ancestors so we don't know if they were built or evolved.
How do we find out if they have semantics?
- danielam 9y agoComputers aren't a black box mystery. We understand how they work. We understand that they are implementations of Turing machines (or similar computational models), and Turing machines are by definition a formalism and thus syntactic in nature. Computers are therefore no more than syntactic machines (I would further claim that computers aren't strictly speaking syntactic machines either, but physical artifacts -- and we can use different physical properties and states toward this end -- that simulate a formalized, syntactical system). Syntax as such is semantically blind, so to speak. Human beings, on the other hand, do "possess" meanings. We have concepts. Pure syntax can never amount to a single concept anymore than purely speaking about climbing Mt. Everest ever itself amounts to actually climbing Mt. Everest. Any semantics we associate with computer programs is entirely an act of interpretation on the human end.
- mannykannot 9y agoYou have not established that being a syntactic machine rules out semantics. The use of phrases like 'no more than' and 'purely' do not make the case; instead, their validity here is dependent on the premise.