No, analog computers truly are symbolic. The simplest analog computer - the abacus - is obviously symbolic, and thus is also true for WW2 gun fire control computers, ball-and-shaft integrators, etc. They do not use inscriptions which is maybe where you're getting confused. But the turning of a differential gear to perform an addition is a symbolic operation: we are no more interested in the mechanics of the gear than we are the calligraphy of a written computation or the construction of an abacus bead, we are interested in the physical quantity that gear is symbolically representing.

Your comment is only true if you take an excessively reductive view of "symbol."

▲ ants_everywhere 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not confused, and an abacus is a digital computer.

You keep referring to what we are interested in, but that's not a relevant quantity here.

A symbol is a discrete sign that has some sort of symbol table (explicit or not) describing the mapping of the sign to the intended interpretation. An analog computer often directly solves the physical problem (e.g. an ODE) by building a device whose behavior is governed by that ODE. That is, it solves the ODE by just applying the laws of physics directly to the world.

If your claim is that analog computers are symbolic but the same physical process is not merely because we are "interested in" the result then I don't agree. And you'd also be committed to saying proteins are symbolic if we build an analog computer that runs on DNA and proteins. In which case it seems like they become always symbolic if we're always interested in life as computation.

	▲	AIPedant 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		This is where you are confused - in fact just plain wrong: `A symbol is a discrete sign that has some sort of symbol table (explicit or not) describing the mapping of the sign to the intended interpretation` Symbols do not have to be discrete signs. You are thinking of inscriptions, not symbols. Symbols are impossible for humans to define. For an analog computer, the physical system of gears / etc symbolically represent the physical problem you are trying to solve. X turns of the gear symbolizes Y physical kilometers.

▲ zabzonk 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Surely an abacus is a simple form of digital computer? The position/state of the beads is not continuous, ignoring the necessary changes of position/state.