Newsgroups: comp.ai.nat-lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!news.duke.edu!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!gatech!rutgers!argos.montclair.edu!hubey
From: hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu (H. M. Hubey)
Subject: Re: Reductionist Materialism (was Re: I lie therefore I am?)
Message-ID: <hubey.784661681@pegasus.montclair.edu>
Sender: root@argos.montclair.edu (Operator)
Organization: SCInet @ Montclair State
References: <36e5oe$6nc@toves.cs.city.ac.uk> <783521040snz@develco.demon.co.uk> <390dt7$gf9@netaxs.com> <39p329$kno@crl2.crl.com> <1994Nov11.210534.24348@seas.smu.edu>
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 1994 17:34:41 GMT
Lines: 30

kjh@seas.smu.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson) writes:

>You (and almost everybody else in AI, NLP, MT, and machine learning) are
>making a fundamental category mistake.  You are confusing form and
>matter.  You are confusing syntax and semantics.  Actually, you are
>denying form, and claiming matter is all that exists---denying
>semantics, and claiming that syntax is all that exists.

At one time "every thing is logic" was pursued; logicism. Then
everything became set theory. Now everything seems to have
become "formal language".  And how far has it progressed?

It's still stuck at the context-free and context-sensitive
barrier. More or less it means it's stuck at exactly the
point where we need it most i.e. can't get beyond syntax
and we have to waive our hands to get to semantics.

Only a fool would try to teach, learn or understand something
as simple as physics (simple compared to the complexity of
living things) via formal languages (that is proceeding the
same way as is normally done in math and CS courses).

Who's confused?  You still think you can crack the secrets
of the universe with the latest fashion in math--formal
language theory.

--
						-- Mark---
....we must realize that the infinite in the sense of an infinite totality, 
where we still find it used in deductive methods, is an illusion. Hilbert,1925
