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Article 5091 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Message-ID: <1992Apr14.070755.18027@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <1992Apr12.120115.1221@oracorp.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 92 07:07:55 GMT
Lines: 24

In article <1992Apr12.120115.1221@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough) writes:

>As to David Chalmers' comment about "strong conditionals" the only
>thing I can think of is that he must be demanding that two
>functionally equivalent systems must have the same behavior even when
>started in unreachable states. For example, if you start the 5 color
>map program in the state that corresponds to having found a map that
>requires 5 colors, then it will behave differently than the do-nothing
>one-state machine. Even though it is impossible to reach such a state,
>you could artificially put the 5-color map program into a "success"
>state, by, for instance, setting the success boolean to "true". (Is
>that what you mean, Dave?)

That's part of it.  The other, perhaps more important, part is that
the right state-transitions have to be produced by counterfactual
inputs.  Most implementations of the single-state machine won't
satisfy these input-dependent conditionals (implementations
of the single-state machine needn't even be sensitive to different
inputs).

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


