[lit-ideas] amplification re PI
- From: "Adriano Palma" <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2012 14:46:58 +0200
** Low Priority **
** Reply Requested by 4/14/2012 (Saturday) **
did anyone ever consider reading Turing?
it helps... it is the 100th birthday of the man....
>>> Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> 14/04/2012 02:36 PM >>>
The issue of whether computers "grasp" the game of chess is rather
complicated. They do "grasp" the rules, if that is what is meant, but
there is a lot more to the game. Until fairly recently, chess computers
worked mostly by "brute force" tactical calculation of moves and had
next to no grasp of strategy. However, in the recent years, human
grandmasters became part of the programming teams, and this resulted in
modern programs developing / being tuned into a better understanding of
strategy.
O.K.
From: Richard Henninge <RichardHenninge@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2012 6:13 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Philosophical Investigations online -
amplification re PI
Pace my correctors, Messieurs Ritchie and McEvoy, respectively, re
weaponry, the petard has already exploded before the hoisting begins
and, re grammar, when concluded, one has been hoisted, not hoist, on
one's own petard.
So many things go wrong in Donal's handling of my post that I am
limiting myself to addressing his first six paragraphs.
Donal hoists himself on his own petard because he challenges us to
produce an example of a rule whose sense is said or stated in the rule
and not just shown. The whole enterprise is skewed from the start as
Robert Paul has eloquently and accurately noted:
> The issue is stark and goes to fundamentals. My [i.e. Donal's] claim
is not merely that
> there are _some_ "rules" [as W means the term] whose sense is not
'said'
> in a statement of that "rule", but that (for W) *there is no "rule"
> whose sense is _said_ in a statement of that "rule"*.
Nowhere, in Wittgenstein's examination of rule following does anything
remotely like this appear. He nowhere speaks of the 'sense' of a rule,
or, by implication how its 'sense' differs from what it 'shows.' His
treatment of rules; rule following; being guided by, grasping,
continuing, understanding a rule is, as I said earlier, interesting,
complicated, essentially linked to some of what he says about
agreement,
games—and so on. And, to repeat: Wittgenstein himself has no clear
'answer' or 'solution' to the questions posed and the problems that
arise between §201 and §243 (and appear in various formulations
elsewhere). The 'say/show' distinction, is not part of his discussion
of
rules and the problems attending them. See too e.g. §§82-85.
And so, though I know that Donal is barking up the wrong tree with his
notion of the "sense" (which word he endows with a hypnotic, ephemeral,
mystic significance, so to speak, all his own) of a rule, which he puts
forward as if it were state's evidence that will prove the validity of
his big-deal say/show-distinction theory of early and late Wittgenstein,
I, fool, rush in with what strikes me as being the obvious refutation of
his no-sense-of-the-rule-in-the-statement-of-the-rule theory: that a
computer produces rule-based behavior (plays a game--chess, for example,
continues a sequence, or, as Donal suggested, takes a number, adds 2 to
it, and then adds 2 to the number so generated) solely on the basis of
the statement of the rule--the part of its programming that results in
its rule-based behavior.
Donal can blather as much as he wants about the inadequacy of computer
translations, but it was he who chose a very simple rule as the test of
his theory, a rule concerning mathematics, and it is simply bluffing on
his part to say that "What computers do by way of processing 'rules'
does not involve their grasping the 'sense' of the 'rules' involved."
What does Donal think this mysterious "sense of the rule" is? Probably
Donal thinks that Wittgenstein has some special "sense" of "sense."
He is also grasping at straws when he puts so much emphasis on the word
"grasping," as if to exclude what a computer does when it "grasps" the
game of chess. This is all just "definitional," but that is the point of
the exercise when understanding Wittgenstein. If you can deny that a
computer "grasps" the sense of chess even though it can play chess
perfectly according to the rules, you can as easily deny that any
individual grasps the sense of chess even though he or she can play
chess perfectly according to the rules.
And so what computers do cannot be taken to show anything about the
“sense” of a “rule” in the sense in which W is interested in “rules”
and their “sense”: for what computers do by way of processing does not
involve computers grasping the “sense” of a “rule”. And since their
processing does not involve grasping the sense of a rule, what they do
cannot be taken to show that the “sense” of a “rule” may be said (on the
basis that it is “said” in what they process).
Richard’s attempted refutation is therefore entirely misconceived.
What Richard should really try to do (if he really wants to refute W's
position)
You see how far afield Donal is when he thinks I am trying to refute
Wittgenstein's position and not his own, but Donal has apparently
convinced himself that his position and Wittgenstein's are the same! As
Robert Paul explained, Wittgenstein never used the word "sense" in the
sense of the "sense of a rule." I would maintain that Wittgenstein
"would" never have used it in that sense, but if forced to use it as
applied to rules, I think, in keeping with Wittgenstein's thought, you
would have to say that the sense of a rule is "grasped" or whatever if a
person, or even a computer, acts according to it, and I am afraid Donal
is not so clear on the distinction between showing and stating when it
comes to rules.
is state a “rule” so that its sense is _said_ in what is stated: but
stating a computer programme, even one comprising “rules” [of
computation], is not to state any “rules” whose “sense” is _said_ in
what is stated.
I, or a computer, receive the instruction, which is also a statement of
the rule--"take a number, add 2 to it, and then add 2 to the number so
generated"--and the computer and I do just that: Have I not stated "a
'rule' so that its sense is _said_ in what is stated," i.e. --"take a
number, add 2 to it, and then add 2 to the number so generated."
Donal, when he is at his best, is a good lawyer. But this isn't law.
And Donal remains hoisted.
Richard Henninge
University of Mainz
----- Original Message -----
From: Donal McEvoy ( mailto:donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx )
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2012 11:50 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Philosophical Investigations online -
amplification re PI
There are longer ways but here is a shorter way with Richard Henninge’s
post.
Richard, as I recall, knows important things about the shortcomings of
the English translation of Wittgenstein’s work. Whatever these
shortcomings, for example in conveying the exact sense of W’s writing in
German, they were translated by humans not computers. And this for good
reason.Their shortcomings would arguably be much greater if the
translation had been performed by a computer following some programme:
and that is because computers have no grasp of the “sense” of language
as humans do. What computers do by way of processing “rules” does not
involve their grasping the “sense” of the “rules” involved.
A simple example: a computer may contain an error in its programme so
that it produces the calculation ‘2 + 2 = 44’; but where a human would
baulk because they grasp that this must be mistaken, the computer,
having no grasp of the sense of what it processes, will not baulk at
this mistake – it will not baulk because it does not grasp it must be a
mistake [it will only ‘baulk’ if another part of its programme causes it
to ‘baulk’ i.e. treat this as an “error”]. A computer will no more baulk
at ‘2 + 2 = 44’ than will a blackboard it is chalked on: for, in
Popper’s useful terms, both the computer and the blackboard are
confined to processing information at the level of World 1, and lack
conscious understanding of the content they process [still less, in
Popper's terms, do they grasp the World 3 content or mathematical
principle according to which '2 + 2 = 44' must be a mistake).
And so what computers do cannot be taken to show anything about the
“sense” of a “rule” in the sense in which W is interested in “rules”
and their “sense”: for what computers do by way of processing does not
involve computers grasping the “sense” of a “rule”. And since their
processing does not involve grasping the sense of a rule, what they do
cannot be taken to show that the “sense” of a “rule” may be said (on the
basis that it is “said” in what they process).
Richard’s attempted refutation is therefore entirely misconceived.
What Richard should really try to do (if he really wants to refute W's
position) is state a “rule” so that its sense is _said_ in what is
stated: but stating a computer programme, even one comprising “rules”
[of computation], is not to state any “rules” whose “sense” is _said_ in
what is stated.
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