X-Message-Number: 11519
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: reply to Mike Perry, again on symbols and the world
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 1999 23:38:31 +1000 (EST)

To Mike Perry:

I have (I hope) already explained the issue about symbols to you. It is
because a poet or even a mathematician uses an implicit connection between
the symbols he/she uses and the world that what he/she is not simply 
producing more trains of symbols according to programmed rules. (You might
wish to read my reply to Bob, too). 

And yes, it is just possible that the totality of symbols we use can be
connected to the world in only one way. That would allow you to make your
claims about the poets and mathematicans that exist only in computers. 
However to prove that this is true takes far more than a few vague ideas;
it requires an extended and profound study of at least one human symbolic
system, say English. No one has made such a study, and a few vague ideas
prove nothing at all. Perhaps someday we'll be sufficiently equipped with
both the computers and the ideas needed to do such a study. 

However I myself doubt strongly that our totality of symbols works in
this way. A poet that is basically a program in a computer does not
write poetry (though if the programmer who created that poet is good
enough, he might make the poet write something that looked very much
like poetry. It would do so because of what we --- and the
programmer !!! ---brought to it, not because of the computer poet).

And yes, symbols are subtle. I do strongly suggest that you read the later
Wittgenstein, who tried to express the same difference. Because we are
human beings we use language, and so symbols, constantly. And one fault of
this system is that it's very easy for us human beings to convince
ourselves that our language really is the same as the world. It is NOT.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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