[Wittrs] Re: Nominalism / Neil
- From: "jrstern" <jrstern@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:21:55 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@...> wrote:
>
> > I mean, sure a cat is a cat only if I interpret it
> > as such, if I interpret it as a dishrag, well, it
> > may make a nice dishrag in a certain context. But
> > it's still a cat, too.
>
> That sort of argument only works because the question of what
> is a cat is not contentious.
What works?
And I do not assume that cat is all that well defined,
except nominalistically, that we can give some examples.
> > But wait, if I write a mundane payroll program, and
> > have a variable "person", and a statement person = "John",
> > and the computer executes that, you want to say the computer
> > is not using symbols?
>
> The compiled code doesn't even contain "person" anywhere, unless
> that was made an extrn, or you turned on symbolic debugging.
> However, my comment was about the computer as electro-mechanical
> system, where no symbols are being used at all.
extrn? Heh. Those were the days.
The practical realities today are that most modern programming
language systems keep some or all of the names around for late
and dynamic binding, if not keep the source code around and
interpret it like Javascript and Ajax and such.
Not that it matters. Let's go back to punched cards and
static loaders and optimizing compilers and whatever you like,
toss the ability to reverse-engineer things.
What of the fact that you forward-engineered it,
that the compiled code does what the symbolic version specified?
Does that matter?
I suggest it does not, really. That is, I am reserving the right
to consider it either way, at my convenience, because I *could*
get the exact same results by changing from the compiled version
to a fully interpreted one. They are intertranslatable.
Josh
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