Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!jqb
From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: When is a simulation of an X an X?
Message-ID: <jqbD33zHo.2EB@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <D2yqLF.AM6@metronet.com> <Pine.HPP.3.91.950127181756.4921B-100000@acg60.wfunet.wfu.edu>
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 1995 09:24:59 GMT
Lines: 49

In article <Pine.HPP.3.91.950127181756.4921B-100000@acg60.wfunet.wfu.edu>,
helen ruth etters  <etters@wfu.edu> wrote:
>On Wed, 25 Jan 1995, Bill Wallace wrote:
>
>> I have sampled the the thread called "When is a simulation of a Y a Y?"
>> with a great deal of interest. I responded to it but it seems to have
>> been lost or ignored.
>> 
>> My answer to the question is: when the observer has NO independent
>> method of determining which is which. Virtual reality of the distant
>> future?
>> 
>> Bill Wallace
>> 
>I suggest that the thread in question does not lead so easily out of the 
>labyrinth. A fake Rembrandt is a simulation of a Rembrandt, but even if 
>an observer had no independent method of determining its inauthentic 
>status, it still is not a Rembrandt.

You propose that there are no grounds for denying that it is a Rembrandt,
yet you claim is that it is not a Rembrandt.  On what grounds?

It seems to me that an epistemology in which a Y is considered to be an X
when it is indistinguishable from an X is quite workable as long as one
does not become so committed to an identity that one ignores distinctions
in order to maintain it (not to say that there aren't other forms of irrational
behavior that one should also avoid).

Of course, a whole host of issues is being ignored here.  Is a Rembrandt with
the paint faded half away a Rembrandt?  Is a restored Rembrandt a Rembrandt?
Would a process that lifted the paint off a Rembrandt canvas and deposited it,
in exactly the same configuration on another canvas, produce a Rembrandt?
Would a Rembrandt in which the canvas had become fossilized be a Rembrandt?
Would a painting created by Rembrandt holding the hand of another that
actually held the brush be a Rembrandt?  Would a painting created by Rembrandt
telling someone exactly how to mix the paint and exactly where to apply it be
a Rembrandt?  (What about Michelangelo's works such as Moses which required
assistants?  What about works of music or literature that were dictated?  What
about a paraplegic who paints by moving a joystick with hsr tongue?  What
about the speech that Stephen Hawking produces?  Is that real speech, or
simulated speech?)  What if that person later recreated the painting by
repeating those actions from memory?  What if that person had previously
performed those exact actions to produce a painting in psychic or coincidental
anticipation of Rembrandt's directions?

As so often happens, we have a misunderstanding of the nature of language
parading as some other philosophical problem.
-- 
<J Q B>
