On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 05:08:21PM +1100, Bruce Kellett 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. >
Are you trying to say that modus ponens is not valid of reality, hence computionalism is false (but that's employing modus ponens, so you've tied yourself up in a knot)? Or, are you trying to say that computationalism has no semantic content because it is formal? That argument has already been run by someone on this list - the trouble is the only semantics required are internal to the system. Or something else? -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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.
