[Wittrs] Re: The CRA in Symbolic Form (According to Joe)
- From: Justintruth <truth.justin@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:39:10 -0700 (PDT)
> a running program is only using syntactic operations
Can someone help me understand under what conditions a machine is
"only using syntactic operations". Is Von Neumann architecture
required? Parallel processing ok? A Turing machine required? Is
storage of states and a clock required or is an analog device ok?
Surely "using syntactic operations" does not mean that "it is running
a program" as the syntax of the program is just a function of the user
interface for the compiler not a function of the target systems
execution of the complied program. In fact different syntax can be
used to achieve the same result at run time and the same syntax could
be used to cause a completely different execution just by changing the
compiler.
If I have a simple button labeled "Start" then there is a syntax to
the labeling of the button. That does not mean depressing the button
is a "syntactical operation". Does it?
So called "machine language" are typically just physical (usually
electrical) states of a device which when "execution" is initiated, by
pressing the run key for example, cause a cascade of physical
processes. Sometimes those processes result in states that are
interpretable according to the rules of some language (as in the CRA
taken literally does) but not always. Is it required that the output
be a language?
Is a chimp operating syntactically? Only when he communicates with
other chimps or when he reaches for a banana peels it and eats it
while sitting alone?
I suspect that unraveling the CRA comes down to understanding what
"using syntactic operations" means precisely. Or has the term been
expanded so much that any device that is assumed to operate according
to some formal rule or "physics" is syntactic?
At least what does it mean in this proof and in this conversation?
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