About
    • AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.
Search
Full
Incoming links
from Interpretation
  • See How Interpreters Work. Jeff S means something more like a Minsky-frame or Schank-script (or the process of using one). Which is a more complex and interesting than the straightforward mechanical thing.
from Does Meaning Require Freedom?

How Interpreters Work

27 Nov 2022 - 23 Nov 2024
Open in Logseq
    • An interpreter, in the computational/mechanical sense, is a device that operates over a set of instructions and performs some action.
    • A computer is an interpreter; so is a ribosome.
    • The philosophically interesting thing about these mechanisms is that they illustrate ways in which physical systems can implement semantics. A triplet of DNA codons means a particular amino acid, but only by virtue of the structure of its interpreter (the ribosome) [cite Hofstadter piece]. "ADD A to B" means a particular process of electrical activity as well as its result.
    • Humans of course are vastly more complicated but they share this quality of being both physical/mechanical devices and interpreters of meaning.