At least you got that my “typo” was intentional. And it was not fortuitous - it was quite intentional.
What is happening here is that there is a semantic construct called the “for loop” and that there are various syntactic mappings into this construct. The reason that the n+1st language is easier to learn than the nth is that the student has the semantic constructs down, and just needs to learn the syntactic one. However, students often have a hard time with new semantic constructs in a new language, thus write C as if it were Pascal, for instance. I’ve noticed that younger people have an easier time of object oriented languages than us old folks, even though I did work in this area before C++, and even designed an objected oriented language for my dissertation.
A compiler can do one of three things with my second case.
Report a syntax error. This error may or may not be helpful, depending on how much effort has gone into considering error cases.
Convert the fpr into a for because the compiler writer considered this case. This happens - my professor freshman year said that because he didn’t spell very well, he wrote a Fortran compiler that allowed various misspellings of keywords. Those who have written compilers will know this is actually very easy to do. In this case the error was anticipated in advance.
By pattern matching, decide that this structure is actually a for loop, and treat it as such. This is different from case 2 since the compiler writer does not need to anticipate all errors. I don’t think this is done for compilers, but when you misspell a word in Google Google corrects it, and not by having a list of common misspellings I’m sure. In this case no one anticipated the error, but it can still be corrected.
What is really happening here, I think, is that there is a syntactic space around each semantic construct, and the code in case 3 searches that space for the closest semantic construct matching what was written. A for loop is of course just like a Sigma in math, and that is just a way of denoting ennumeration. Nonetheless, I don’t think my example argues for an “essence” at all - since you’d have to tell me how far away syntactically I can get while still being in the essence of the loop.
What do you mean by compiler? Case in point. I ported the Zurich Pascal compiler to Multics when I was in school. It did not work on Multics, being in Pacal where there was no Pascal compiler. There was a program that translated Pascal into PL/1. I used this until I got the compiler ported and working, and then had it compile itself. When was the Pascal compiler a compiler? Was it when it was non-working code, when the PL/1 version worked, or when it actually compiled a Pascal program (itself) directly?
Do I understand that the program came into existence without a person first makeing the computer or even thinking up the word Pascal? You say you used this so it had existed in some form, so then the computer made it so it could compile itself.
A thought or idea exists in the mind of a human but it didn’t exist until the mind grasped it. Before it was thought it didn’t exist.
I honestly had no intention of pinning you down on a technicality. The fact is that whether or not there exists such a thing as a Planck interval of time (which is controversial these days), it is not an epistemic problem, but a metaphysical one. No matter how much you know, no matter what your source of knowledge, you cannot make a true statement about the present simply because there is no present. Reality is not a function of time, which was what all this was about. I asked you whether reality comes and goes because you tied it to temporality. Nothing temporal can possibly be real.
Your complier tells you that. There is a loop, and then there is not. It is a stark dichotomy. Nevertheless, whatever compiler you conceive, and whatever rules it enforces — from strict to loose — there must be something that is essentially what it examines before it (the compiler) can be written.
If the object in question is “Pascal compiler for Multics” as opposed to “Pascal Compiler” I don’t know when it got conceived. Did it exist when the people before me create the Pl/1 translator, since they had the concept of a compiler even if they didn’t wish to create one. Did it exist when I decided to produce one, or did it exist only after I solved all the porting problems to get a working one? There are many levels of refinement involved from the concept of a thing to that thing.
But a complex thing takes more than one thought. Did Pascal exist when Wirth decided there should be an Algol-like language, or when he gave it a name, or when he completed the language definition, or when they completed the compiler? Take a novel. Is the “essence” of the one I wrote the title (which I still don’t like and can change at any time) or the plot outline or the actual words on paper? I can’t hold all the incidents in my head. I also changed things around between versions, and from my original conception. When did the novel become a novel? When did it become a particular instance of a novel? What was the moment when you can say it existed, and when I thought of it? I’m still revising, so maybe it doesn’t exist yet?
But there is a concept of for-loop or do-loop, taught in computer science classes, which is compiler and language independent. A C compiler cannot recognize a Pascal for loop, but any person would.
In my case 3, there may be very arbitrary divisions between what the compiler can recognize and what it can’t. And perhaps a bug or oversight in the code creates a compiler which can recognize all syntactically legal for loops, but only a strange and non-intuitive subset of illegal ones which could be mapped to legal ones. Even worse, perhaps the compiler learns, perhaps through a swtich telling it that the thing it just rejected is actually legal and mappable. With enough examples, from enough people, it could go beyond what any one person conceived, just as checkers programs went beyond what their authors programmed into them by learning.
I’m not sure for loops are a good example, but there are certainly things about which different experts can argueabout whether the things are instances of a certain class of object. Who sets what the essence truly is?
You exist so any idea would come from your existence,your brain exists so you can think,if you were not born into existence you could not write or do anything as you would be non-existent. If your brain did not function you would not be able to think or do most of what you do now as a conscious choice.
You keep making my point for me. There is an essential concept (loop) that precedes any compiler (or any language, for that matter).
Well, “truly” is redundant. If A is B, then A is truly B. And no one sets it. The essence is what the essence is. You said it yourself: a loop is just like a Sigma, and there are various syntactic mappings into this construct. What language it’s written in doesn’t matter. What the compiler does or doesn’t do to accomodate syntax errors doesn’t matter. Whatever the language, whatever the compiler, however it’s mapped — it must make a summation happen.
Essence is not ontologically charged; it’s aesthetically charged. It isn’t a question of existence, but of value. The essence of a thing is found in its value to you. Consider Chinese philosopher Fa-tsang’s Chin shih-tzu chang — the Gold Lion. Is it essentially gold, or essentially a lion? That depends upon your aesthetical taste. If you value gold above all else, then you might well melt it down and make bricks of it. If you value art above all else, then you might well seek to preserve it in its pristine state. In fact, there are as many interpretations of it as there are people. Some might even want to have sex with it or eat it. Therefore, you determine the essence of a free moral spirit not by looking at what it has come to exist as, but by looking at what it values. That’s why God is essentially good: He values goodness above all else. Do you value knowledge above all else? Then that is your essence. Do you value affirmation above all else? Then that is your essence.
I agree with all this. My view is that any concept comes from a combination of inputs to our brain, recombination of those inputs in our brain, and perhaps random neuron firing. What doesn’t happen is tapping into some sort of essential nature of an idea that is sitting out there. What one might call an essence is an abstraction of actual things and ideas. An essence necessarily loses some of the properties of the underlying ideas, as any abstraction does.
Let’s switch to biology, and consider the concept of species. That could be considered as some sort of essence, but what it seems to be is an abstraction that frays around the edges. That we find it convenient to tag a subset of animals as a species does not constrain reality into producing any such thing.
I’m having difficulty with the concept that an existent thing has its own, intrinsic essence, yet the essence of that thing is found in the subjective valuation of it by an external agent.
For one agent, the value of a compiler may be expressed in terms of function: the value of a compiler is that it compiles. Another agent might just appreciate well-written code, and for them the value of a compiler is its beauty.
I’m not understanding whether we, as subjective agents, assign existent things their essence, or if we discover and label aspects of their intrinsic essence.
Yargh. I doubt if I’m going to word this right the first time:
“What I value above all else is my essence”: There’re two things in that statement; there’s me, and there’s what I value. And yet, there is only one thing because my essence is what I AM.
I don’t understand… what’s the “I” in that statement as opposed to my “essence”?
Let’s back up. My first post in this subthread accepted as a given the semantic construct “for loop” and asked how you would recognize a syntactic construct as mapping to this. Your response, boiled down, is that it does if the compiler writer was clever enough to recognize it, but it isn’t if the compiler writer isn’t. That is not very satisfying, since it fails to address the underlying issue of identifying the characteristics of something. Would you try to specify the essence of “horseness” by seeing what a 3 year old kid called a horse? It’s not different, really.
Now back to loops. Were loops invented or discovered? Did the first person to use a loop somehow connect to its essence, or did he construct a loop out of the idea of counting and repetition? Loops are broader than for loops. While loops keep repeating, based on some condition. The idea of something repeating can easily be gotten from nature - days repeat, seasons repeat, years repeat. Does this contain the essence of a loop?
I don’t know when Sigma notation was invented. I’d suspect the for loop was invented by my 19th century honey Ada Augusta, but I’d have to research that. If there is an essence, why didn’t people before this have access to it? Sigma notation depends strongly on the concept of a variable. Are essences dependent on other essences in the way inventions are on other inventions?
To summarize, I think the concept of loop is an invention, and not essential, except in the sense as an essential (vital) component of programming languages, which is not your meaning.
Don’t confuse the evaluation with the thing evaluated. Don’t lose sight of the fact that the universe — and everything in it — is essentially a probability distribution of no moral significance. The only essence that matters is spiritual essence. What it is that we discover is our own essence by what we see as the essence of things we value.
They are the same. Again, Jesus taught this fact: “Where your treasure is (whatever it is that you value) there your heart is also (that is essentially you).”
Why shouldn’t a three-year-old be qualified to specify the essence of horseness? Essence is what essence is, but we all have perceptions. No one person can stand and say, “I am the authority on essence.” The for-loop as well is nothing but gobbledygook to a lot of people.
I would say that counting and repetition IS the essence of a loop. Lots of things loop.
Essences are dependent on perception of value. The first man who conceived a loop was the first one who found some value in it.
But inventions again illustrate essentialism. They don’t just pop out of the blue as haphazard concoctions which people then scurry to define. They are born of ideas that perceive some value in what the invention will be.
So, you posit that essence is there, but that no one, and no group of people can define it or identify it? I agree that no one is an authority. Isn’t a better solution to this problem that “horseness” is an abstraction defined on a set of things (horses) or, in the case of for loops, concepts and their instantiations. This way of looking at things explains the lack of agreement on what horseness is (other abstractions might be better) It’s like fitting an nth order curve to m > n data points - some are going to be off the curve, and there are varying metrics as to what the best fit is.
Practically speaking you’re right - no one invents anything unless they perceive some value to it. But the process of invention includes rejecting ideas and concepts for which there is no value or value below some minimum threshhold. Do these count as inventions? I’ve already given my take on where new ideas come from - lots get filtered out. Would someone conceiving of a loop, but having no application for it, be said to have invented it? (Inventions can happen more than once.)
Well, the opposite, really. Everyone can define it, and they define in terms of how they value it.
I think you’ve only pushed your problem back a step. Calling it an abstraction merely means that now you have to define the abstraction. In the end, you define it as what it means to you. A person can have anything from no understanding at all, to a cursory understanding, to a deep philosophical understanding of any concept. And sometimes, the deeper it gets, the less it is understood. That’s why all this brouhaha over whether the essence is A or the essence is B is pointless. The essence is what the essence is, but if you perceive it as C, then your evaluation of it will be based on neither A nor B.
Intersting twist. It takes us straight back to the value of mistakes in science. Mistakes can lead to discoveries, and therefore have value. We took care to differentiate those sorts of mistakes from intentional fraud, which has no value (at least to me). But the person who fudged the data saw some value in it, perhaps fame or glory or who knows.
I’ll respond to this later, because I have lost track of what you mean by essence, which is due to my lack of reading or remembering. I don’t have time to review this discussion now.
I’m not talking about mistakes here - I’m talking about the internal filtering of a concept, often called the Concept phase in a product development process. In this phase, which can be done alone or with someone, you spit out ideas, try to shoot them down, and reject most. I wouldn’t call them mistakes, since there is no illusion that most of the ideas have any merit, and no one backs them. Ones that get past this filter might be checked by simple experiments. Bob Colwell, architect of the Pentium Pro, talks about one day experiments.
If a concept is just incorrect, you might say it has no value (except as Edison’s thing that didn’t work.) But lots of things do have value - but not enough, or not as much as something else. No fraud involved at all. The biggest danger here is self-fraud, where someone thinks an idea is so good they skip the experiment or filter step, having convinced themselves of its value. Part of the value of peer review is to catch this kind of thing before it gets out in public. The author may provide an honest set of results, to be told that they don’t mean what he thinks they mean.
Okely dokely. You can get back to me at your leisure. Right now, it looks like I’ll be tied up tomorrow pretty much myself. Especially in the morning. Thanks, Voyager. Always a pleasure to discuss things with you.