On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 3:03 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 7/10/2014 5:25 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: > > > > > On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 2:15 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > >> On 7/10/2014 5:01 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: >> >>> >>> > It's my example and ex hypothesi they do go through the same states, >>> they're just *about* different things. >>> >>> Either both are the same computation and goes through the same state >>> computing the same thing >>> >>> >> But "same thing" is ambiguous. They may both compute 2.76 but in one >> case I know it means degrees Kelvin and in the other it's >> parts-per-million. In which case I'm the external world providing the >> referents. >> > > And "I'm the external world providing the references" is less ambiguous? > PGC > > > It can be disambiguated by the action I take on it, what I tell other > people, what they do. Which is why I think the question of "what is being > computed" can only be answered with reference to a big context environment, > essentially a whole "world". > Yes, but I'd say both of you are right. For example, I follow you on " But that's not true. I have a differential equation integrator in my computer and it could be going through exactly the same states in two different instances; one computing heat transfer in a disc brake and other computing diffusion of pollutant in a pond. So there is not a one-one mapping either way." The ambiguity ISTM is that linguistic plausibility of a finite actions, communication between people, what they do/what they refer to/what outputs they read at some step, is blended with logical possibility of infinite computation in arithmetic. It vanishes when we don't blend. PGC > > Brent > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
