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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Feb6.060959.25099@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <1992Feb3.113723.2519@arizona.edu> <1992Feb4.192338.23882@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Feb5.173116.8522@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 92 06:09:59 GMT
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In article <1992Feb5.173116.8522@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@widder.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>DC:
>>I think one can fairly deny that an arbitrary object implements any
>>given FSA.  There's certainly a real sense in which a rock doesn't have
>>the causal complexity of the brain.  So presumably one has to put some
>>restrictions on what counts as a "state" or a "property" in the
>>definition of implementation.  States with time-varying definitions,
>>at least, will be ruled out.
>
>Note that your original concern is not with any specification of the rock
>as an FSA, but with the thing itself.  Thus your thesis presupposes that
>there is an essential description associated with enery naturally occurring
>state, surely a prima facie absurdity.  I would be interested in finding
>out how you propose to resolve this conundrum.

I don't see how this follows from what I wrote.  All I need is that the
notion of implementation be such that the rock doesn't implement any
given FSA.  The work will be done by the notion of implementation, not
by any doctrine of essentialism.  

>Bravo! having declared yourself a dualist, you are now well on the way to
>becoming perhaps the very first Platonist ever to grace the AI supporter
>camp!  For how do you propose to "cut the nature at its joints" without
>inferring the Third Realm of immutable Forms that determine the boundaries
>thereof?
>
>What is a natural state?

I don't have a definition of the restricted class of states (if indeed
such a restriction is needed) to hand, but the possibility of such a
restriction doesn't seem to imply Platonism.  There's a precedent in
Goodman's "grue" discussion: presumably one doesn't need Platonism for
the distinction between projectible and unprojectible predicates to be
meaningful.

-- 
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."


