From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!christo Tue Jun  9 10:06:55 EDT 1992
Article 6079 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Grounding: Real vs. Virtual (formerly "on meaning")
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <600@trwacs.fp.trw.com> <1992May24.143025.7180@psych.toronto.edu> <6924@pkmab.se>
Message-ID: <BpBso3.850@psych.toronto.edu>
Keywords: symbol, analog, Turing Test, robotics
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1992 14:38:25 GMT

In article <6924@pkmab.se> ske@pkmab.se (Kristoffer Eriksson) writes:
>
>You seem to be saying that evolution doesn't work. I don't see anything
>in your argument that makes it special for the evolution of minds that
>relate to the world (rather than to some random imagination), rather than
>all of evolution. Do you really believe evolution doesn't work?

Evolution "works" (though I can hardly think of a more equivocal term).
The problem is we don't know how it works. As has been pointed out by more
than one author, Darwin's _Origin of species_ doesn't tell us much about
their *origin*, only change from one to another.  In order for evolution
to "work", it's got to start somewhere. This is exactly the same problem
we've got in the study induction. We know how change the probabilities
of theories; what we don't know is how to get theories in the first place.
Evolution is, in this sense, a big induction problem. Where do the initial
"theories" (i.e., phenotypes) come from? Chance doesn't work because evolution
would never come up with a viable phenotype. We just don't know (although
there are some very entretaining guesses on the market).  In any case,
my original point was that you can't solve a problem of induction in 
psychology by appealing to an identical problem of induction in evolution.

-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
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