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instructions about how to process other expressions. They are sentences about the organization of an encyclopedia. They are True1as you would say. |
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Smith.: You are interpreting every expression by other expressions. I wonder if among your instructions there are semantic primitives, that is, metalinguistic expressions which are not words in themselves and which do not need any further interpretation. |
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CSP: I do not know any expression which is not interpretable. If they are not interpretable, then they are not expressions at all. |
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Smith: I mean such terms as OR, EVEN, ALSO, CAUSE, TO BE, CHANGE. I send them in ''caps lock" so that you can understand that they are not terms of the object language but rather metaterms, concepts, mental categories. |
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CSP: I hardly understand what a concept or a mental category is, but I can tell you that if in a given encyclopedia, let's say, A, I use some of these terms as primitives, I must presuppose them as being interpreted by an encyclopedia B. Then, in B, in order to interpret them, I can assume as primitives terms already interpreted by A. |
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CSP: You're telling me! As a computer you know how difficult being a model of A.I. is. |
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Smith: Do you think that the conjunction AND can be interpretable somewhere? |
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CSP: In E.15, it is a primitive. In E. 1 (which is a microencyclopedia, extremely coherent), I have an interpretation of AND. For instance, I know that ~(A.B) is interpretable as ~A v ~B. I know that if p is T1, and q is F1, then (p.q) is F1. These are interpretations that tell me what I can or cannot do with AND. |
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Smith: I suspect that there is a difference between saying that a dog is a mammal and that AND is such an operator that if ~(A.B) then ~ A v ~.B. |
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CSP: Why? One says that a dog is such a being that you can speak of it only in contexts where it is admitted that a female dog feeds its baby dog through her milk-secreting glands. A dog is a mammal insofar as it is opposed to a fish, in the same way in which AND is opposed to OR. |
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Smith: I see. In 1668, Wilkins, one of our wise men, tried to do the same with TOWARD, UP, UNDER, BEYOND, and so on. Tell me one thing at least: do you use operators like IF or THEN? Do you process your information by using ways of reasoning of the type: if it is true that x is a rose then it is true that x is a flower? |
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CSP: According to my instructions, every time I meet the word rose, |
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