On 10/25/2015 11:45 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


On 26 October 2015 at 17:43, Brent Meeker <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:



    On 10/25/2015 11:32 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


    On 26 October 2015 at 17:08, Bruce Kellett
    <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

        On 26/10/2015 5:01 pm, Russell Standish wrote:

            On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 03:40:45PM +1100, Bruce Kellett
            wrote:

                I think Carroll's Paradox (or 'What the Tortoise Said
                to Achilles')
                effectively undermines computationalism, or any
                argument that
                arithmetic is prior to physics.

                See:
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Tortoise_Said_to_Achilles

                In order to escape the paradox, you have to resort to
                a formalist
                approach, and that renders the formalism devoid of
                semantic content.

            I don't see why that undermines computationalism. Could
            you please expand?


        Modus ponens is only a formal manipulation of symbols, with
        no semantic content.


    This is an argument John Searle has made. The problem is, the
    brain can also be described as manipulating symbols with no
    semantic content - so where does semantic content come from?

    From interaction with a world.


And the same could be said for a computer - a real or virtual world.

A computer as the AI of a robot would interact with a world. But a computer that is instantiating a virtual world would not be interacting with it.

Brent

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