From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wupost!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aiai!jeff Thu Jan  9 10:34:12 EST 1992
Article 2564 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: A Behaviorist Approach to AI Philosophy
Message-ID: <5910@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 8 Jan 92 20:55:44 GMT
References: <YAMAUCHI.91Nov24030039@magenta.cs.rochester.edu> <5727@skye.ed.ac.uk> <YAMAUCHI.91Nov27203011@magenta.cs.rochester.edu> <5739@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1991Dec6.020944.4967@syacus.acus.oz.au> <5816@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1991Dec17.000420.24457@syacus.acus.oz.
au>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 31

In article <1991Dec17.000420.24457@syacus.acus.oz.au> william@syacus.acus.oz.au (William Mason) writes:
>jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) wrote:
>>2. There is an implicit claim here that a robot built of different
>>materials than are humans could have behavior indistinguishable from
>                                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>humans.  I note that this will not be possible, if the materials are
>                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>sufficiently different.  (It should be obvious that this might be so.
>>For example, if the robot is more massive than a human, it would have
>>greater inertia.)  However, the behavioral differences might not
>>be such as to be significant for the question of whether or not it
>>understood.)
>
>the highlighted passages are an explicit discounting of the initial 
>conditions.  Logically, any reasoning that proceeds from 'discounted
>assumptions' will diverge with 'accepted assumptions'.

Whether you call it discounting (as you do) or disagreement
(as I do), it has a limited scope.  I note that the assumption
of same behavior despite different materials looks like one
that cannot be realized if the materials are sufficiently
different.  But this is in parentheses, so to speak.  Outside
the parens, I make arguments that * don't depend on the
behavior being different *.  

It is, of course, possible to diasgree with premises and also
disagree as to whether the conclusion follows from the premises.
That is what I was doing.  It is not circular reasoning, which
is that you claimed and seem still to be trying to defend.

-- jd


