From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael Tue Feb 11 15:26:14 EST 1992
Article 3632 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael
>From: michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and Panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Feb11.042319.3356@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <1992Feb6.185713.11504@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Feb6.222128.18717@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Feb10.213422.4256@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1992 04:23:19 GMT

In article <1992Feb10.213422.4256@aisb.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>In article <1992Feb6.185713.11504@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:

>>>Well, I'm still a bit confused.  Are you an instrumentalist in
>>>*practice*, but not in *theory*?  If so, what reason do you give for
>>>saying that a humungous lookup table, which produces the right
>>>behaviour, *doesn't* have beliefs.  If the answer is something like
>>>"it doesn't have the appropriate functional relations", then do you 
>>>have a working definition of what these functions are that isn't
>>>simply motivated by ruling out lookup tables?          
>
>It is not necessary to have a worked-out definition to know that
>some things do not qualify. 
>

I didn't asked for a "worked-out" definition, merely a *working* one.  I    
realize that the concept of belief may not be completely well-defined
in functional terms, but what I would like to see is at least some 
basic features, or some sort of principles.  What I *don't* want to
see is ruling something out ad hoc, merely because it doesn't "seem
right."  

And I'm still waiting to find out *why* a lookup table *doesn't*
have beliefs under a functionalist view (assuming that a lookup table
can reproduce "belief-behaviour", which was the original assumption
offered by Chalmers).

- michael




