Abstract
Turner (2018) argues that computer programs must have purposes, that implementation is not a kind of semantics, and that computers might need to understand what they do. I respectfully disagree: Computer programs need not have purposes, implementation is a kind of semantic interpretation, and neither human computers nor computing machines need to understand what they do.
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Notes
For more information on my course, see Rapaport (2005b) and the course syllabi at https://cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/510.html. The current draft of a textbook based on my lectures is available as Rapaport (2019).
There is a large literature on this, including Marr (1982); Suber (1988); Cleland (1993); Egan(1995, 2010, 2014); Peacocke (1995, 1999); Piccinini (2004, 2006, 2008); Rescorla (2007, 2012, 2014, 2015); Sprevak (2010); Buechner (2011, 2018); Anderson (2015); Shagrir and Bechtel (2015, 2018); Hill (2016); Dewhurst (2018). For an overview, see Rapaport (2017a, 2019).
This way of characterizing syntax suggests that it might be an abstract analogue of a “mechanism,” e.g., “a structure performing a function in virtue of its component parts, component operations, and their organization” (Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005, p. 423).
The parenthetical hedge is simply to allow for the possibility of there being other kinds of understanding that might not involve either syntactic or semantic understanding, though I would be hard-pressed to think of one. “Intuitive understanding,” perhaps? But I would consider an intuitive understanding of some domain to be a kind of understanding that one has by having become familiar with that domain, and that would just be what I am calling syntactic understanding. See Rapaport (1995) for further discussion.
See also the more easily accessible (Dennett 2009, p. 10061).
Some current implementations of Excel require a plus-sign between the two clicks in the third instruction. But the version I was using at the time (1992) did not, making the operation that much more mysterious!
On p. 193, Turner refers to the human computer as ‘she,’ as will I.
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Rapaport, W.J. Syntax, Semantics, and Computer Programs. Philos. Technol. 33, 309–321 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-019-00365-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-019-00365-8