From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!ispd-newsserver!psinntp!scylla!daryl Tue Apr  7 23:23:29 EDT 1992
Article 4847 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
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>From: daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough)
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Message-ID: <1992Mar31.145015.12085@oracorp.com>
Organization: ORA Corporation
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1992 14:50:15 GMT

dave@cogsci.indiana.edu (Dave Chalmers) writes:

>>The conclusion, whether you have silent transitions or not, is that
>>functional equivalence doesn't impose any significant constraints on a
>>system above and beyond those imposed by behavioral equivalence.

>Even if your argument above were valid, this certainly wouldn't
>follow -- the requirement that a system contains a humongous lookup
>table is certainly a significant constraint!

I thought that the lookup table was the prime sort of thing that
functionalism was supposed to rule out! If functionalism can't rule
out humongous lookup tables, then what *does* it rule out? It seems
that you want it to rule out rocks, but behaviorism already does that.

I agree that it doesn't follow logically that functionalism reduces to
behaviorism, but on the other hand, there seem to be no examples of
systems that behaviorism allows but functionalism rules out.

>I also note that you've made no response to my observation that your
>original example, even with the silent transitions, is vastly
>constrained, about as constrained as we'd expect an implementation to be.

Yes, I constructed it so that it would meet most people's definition
of a legitimate implementation, but so that all the work is done by
the input and output functions. The input function would correspond to
processes going on inside the ears and eyes for human beings, and so,
in a certain sense, the rock is functionally equivalent to a paralytic
human being with defective sense organs. As I said in another post, I
don't see how functionalism can rule out systems that behaviorism
allows, and I don't see how functionalism can allow systems that
behaviorism rules out without also allowing in rocks.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY



