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Article 2521 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: seebs@asgaard.acc.stolaf.edu (The Laughing Prophet)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
Subject: Re: Penrose on Man vs. Machine
Message-ID: <1992Jan7.112152.27631@news.stolaf.edu>
Date: 7 Jan 92 11:21:52 GMT
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In article <1992Jan7.031553.24886@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com writes:
>Mikhail Zeleny writes:
>> The point is not whether human beings can solve all instances of the
>> halting problem, or tell whether an arbitrary collection of axioms is
>> consistent, but that each time they do so in any particular case,
>> their reasoning is essentially non-algorithmic, as claims Penrose.

Would you care to justify that point? It's an algorithm, alright. Note
that "unconscious" behavior, i.e., that which we are doing but not paying
attention to, gets caught in loops. It takes consicous thought, i.e., stopping
your work to figure out what work you're doing, to detect an infinite loop.

But it can be done through some algorithm, as anyone who's ever used lint,
c++, or a good c compiler can damn well tell you. Hell, I have an OS on
one of my computers that detects simple infinute loops. :)

>But, as I have pointed out, the argument that human reasoning is
>non-algorithmic depends on the assumption that humans can solve all
>instances of the halting problem.

True. And, obviously, we can't. Try to think of a case where we can't detect
that we're halting. When you stop, realizing that you're halting, you will
be one step closer to the confusion that is Truth.

>Daryl McCullough
>ORA Corp.
>301A Harris B. Dates Dr.
>Ithaca, NY 14850-1313

-s
-- 
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