[ExI] Semiotics and Computability (was: The digital nature of brains)

[Stefano Vaj]

On 4 February 2010 14:03, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2010/2/4 Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>:
> > On 4 February 2010 12:15, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> I'm not completely sure what you're saying in this post, but at some
> >> point the string of symbol associations (A means B, B means C, C means
> >> D...) is grounded in sensory input.
> >
> > Defined as?
>
> Input from the environment. "Chien" is "hund", "hund" is "dog", and
> "dog" is the furry creature with four legs and a tail, as learned by
> English speakers as young children.
>

Mmhhh. "Dog" is a sound perceived with one's ears, subvocalised or
represented by the appropriate characters in a given typeface, Pluto may be
a design or icon of such an animal, the bits by which he is rasterised are
another symbol thereof, the pixel of the image of an actual dog on
somebody's retina is another symbol thereof. Symbols all the way down, all
of them "sensorial" after a fashion, for us as exactly as for any other
system.

OTOH, inputs and interfaces are of course crucial to the definition of a
given system. Mr. Jones is different from young baby Brown who is different
from a bat who is different from a PC with a SCSI scanner which is different
from an I-Phone...

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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