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Article 2525 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: silber@orfeo.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Silber)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Problematical construct
Message-ID: <1617@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 7 Jan 92 20:04:08 GMT
References: <1992Jan7.031553.24886@oracorp.com> <1992Jan7.105117.7193@husc3.harvard.edu>
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In article <1992Jan7.105117.7193@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
   Since the notions of a
   program halting on a given input, or a theory being consistent are
   fundamentally second-order, i.e. non-recursive, our ability to understand
   them is sufficient evidence of our ability to perform non-algorithmic
   tasks.
   
It would seem apparent that the ability to characterize/understand a
problem is not neccessarily coextensive with the ability to solve it!
We may "understand" some "higher order" problem without being able to
"perform" "higher-order" "operations" such as "non-algorithmic-transfinite-
dismissive-dissipative-condescension".

   


