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Re: [ontolog-forum] Can Syntax become Semantic ?

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Rob Freeman <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2010 12:08:27 +1300
Message-id: <7616afbc1001221508m2198c107lb3892bb976e8ac7f@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Chris,    (01)

On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 8:59 AM, Christopher Menzel <cmenzel@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Jan 22, 2010, at 3:45 AM, Rob Freeman wrote:
>> ...It's common these days to blame a lack of general knowledge
>> ("background") for our inability to program computers to understand
>> natural language.
>>
>> I'm convinced much of the problem is that there is a wealth of detail
>> in syntactic structure which we simply throw away.
>>
>> This is related to my point that there are many computational
>> processes which cannot be completely summarized.
>
> You've not made a point you've only asserted a sentence with no clear meaning.    (02)

I thought John stated it well:    (03)

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 4:57 AM, John F. Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:    (04)

"For some pairs of (M,T), the predicate Will_Halt can be
determined by a proof in FOL.  But for others, the theorem
prover will loop forever.  But any (M,T) that is undecidable
in FOL will be just as undecidable in English or any other
language, formal or informal."    (05)

Or you could look at Stephen Wolfram's idea of "computational
irreducibility". It appears to me to be saying the same thing:    (06)

"The empirical fact is that the world of simple programs contains a
great diversity of behavior, but, because of undecidability, it is
impossible to predict what they will do before essentially running
them. The idea demonstrates that there are occurrences where theory's
predictions are effectively not possible."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_irreducibility.)    (07)

-Rob    (08)

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