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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Message-ID: <1992Mar17.231452.9979@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 18 Mar 92 04:14:50 GMT
References: <1992Mar17.014500.8635@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <44993@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Mar17.224156.9177@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
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In article <1992Mar17.224156.9177@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes: 

>In article <44993@dime.cs.umass.edu> 
>orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:

JO'R:
>>Putnam is well aware of the counterfactuals objection, and devotes pages
>>96-105 of his book to refuting it.  But the refutation is curious.  He
>>focuses exclusively on David Lewis's theory, which is perhaps not
>>inappropriate since (a) Lewis wrote a paper in direct response to
>>Putnam (a paper which I have not read), and (b) Lewis is Mr. Counterfactual
>>if anyone is.

DC:
>All this is irrelevant to my point.  On those pages, Putnam is concerned
>with the question of the satisfaction of counterfactuals like "if
>A had not happened, B would not have happened", and points out
>that the truth-conditions for statements like these are problematic.
>I'm concerned with the much more straightforward matter of making
>sure that the implementation actually satisfies all the transition
>relations in the state-table; e.g. such that if it is in state C,
>it will transit to state D, and so on.  There's nothing problematic
>about *these* counterfactuals, as C and D should have well-defined
>sets of maximal states corresponding to them (if they were defined
>at all, which they're not).
>
>i.e. I'm not concerned, as Lewis is, with using counterfactuals to make
>sure that certain conditions are met in backing the "A causes B"
>statement.  I'm happy to accept Putnam's construal of causation here
>as "B always follows A", but I'm concerned with making sure that *all* 
>the causal statements are satisfied, not just those that actually come
>up in a given sequence, like "if A then B", but all the others specified
>by the machine table, like "if C then D".  So Lewis' and my objections
>have little to do with each other, and Putnam's response to Lewis
>is irrelevant here.

Not to flame, but merely to return the courtesy you have given to Chris
Green, I am compelled to inquire: are you on acid today, Dave? have you
even bothered to think about the bloody proof?

To quote the source, p.122: "A finite automaton is characterized by a table
which specifies the states and the required state-transitions.  Without
loss of generality, let us suppose the table calls for the automaton..."
In other words, the "Theorem" talks about the very *identity* of the FSA in
question, whence your states C and D will ipso facto be found in the same
table.  Once again, I really wish you would have the courage to publish
those utterly nonsensical "refutations" that you are so fond of making;
perhaps then we wouldn't have to be subjected to the eternal recurrence of
the same bad arguments.

DC:
>Incidentally Lewis's published response to Putnam ("Putnam's Paradox",
>in Australasian Journal of Philosophy circa 1984), was not on this
>topic at all, but rather on Putnam's argument about reference and
>realism.

Quite so; see my remarks elsewhere.  On the other hand, both of the
arguments in question trade in the same notion of arbitrariness:
respectively, of non-content-fixed reference, and of implementation.


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