modlin at concentric.net writes:
>In <6hqde2$pki at ux.cs.niu.edu>, rickert at cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>modlin at concentric.net writes:
>>>But if you really mean to say that the architecture used for the
>>>computing itself makes a difference to what can be computed, given the
>>>necessary input and ignoring performance... then I respectfully suggest
>>>that's incorrect.
>>The important points that you are missing are:
>> We are not given the necessary output. We have to fetch our
>> own input, and make our own decisions as to what input to
>> use.
>> We have to make do with whatever performance we have. It it
>> took a year to make the decision whether to eat that morsel
>> of food, we should soon starve to death.
>I'm not missing those points. I'm explicitly talking about computation,
>to which they are irrelevant.
Fair enough.
In that case I am now in a position to assert definitively that
computation, as you are using the term, is completely irrelevant to
cognition and to intelligence.
>Computation is transforming data according to some functional
>relationship.
I once would have thought so. But that guy Modlin has just persuaded
me otherwise. He has persuaded me that 'computation' is a pointless
game of mechanically manipulating meaningless symbols according to a
completely arbitrary set of pointless rules. I will have to take his
word for it. After all, what right do I have to argue as to what is
computation? I'm only a mathematician.
> What we call a computing architecture is a set of
>primitive functions plus some means of combining them to make up other
>functions not defined as primitives in the architecture.
That sounds more like the definition of a function algebra.
>I'm finding it frustrating that you keep posting that you disagree, when
>I know that you understand this point because you've made it clearly
>yourself, several times. Why disagree when I say the same thing?
Perhaps the reason I keep posting that I disagree, is that I
disagree.
