From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!mips!pacbell.com!iggy.GW.Vitalink.COM!lll-winken!csustan!tom Tue Apr  7 23:23:24 EDT 1992
Article 4838 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: tom@csustan.csustan.edu (Tom Carter)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Summary: Ah, joyous sophistication
Message-ID: <1992Mar31.070425.1633@csustan.csustan.edu>
Date: 31 Mar 92 07:04:25 GMT
References: <1992Mar24.231518.10230@husc3.harvard.edu> <45426@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Mar28.092723.10365@husc3.harvard.edu>
Organization: CSU Stanislaus
Lines: 23

Oh, what a lovely arugment!

Putnam, refuting functionalism, attempts a reductio ad absurdum, to wit:

  The thesis of functionalism would leave us unable to distinguish between
  a rock and a thinking being (a.k.a., finite automaton).

Then, in article <1992Mar28.092723.10365@husc3.harvard.edu>
zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny), apparently attempting to
support Putnam's reductio, adduces

> . . . the
> well-known, demonstrable lack of a sound theoretical distinction between a
> material object "responding" to input by "producing" output, and another
> medium-sized piece of dry goods "just sitting there".

(i.e., we don't need Putnam's `theorem', which is in essence just a weaker
form of Zeleny's `demonstrable lack' . . .)

I suppose then the only difficulty is in figuring out exactly what it is
that has been reduced to the absurd :-)

Tom Carter                      tom@csustan.csustan.edu


