Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.ai.philosophy,sci.logic,sci.cognitive
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!nntp.sei.cmu.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.sprintlink.net!cs.utexas.edu!utnut!utgpu!pindor
From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Zeleny on predictability (was FIRST order?)
Message-ID: <DCE209.LqL@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <jqbDBu09v.G9H@netcom.com> <GUDEMAN.95Jul23094525@baskerville.cs.arizona.edu> <3v6m0p$t1t@percy.cs.bham.ac.uk> <GUDEMAN.95Jul27091026@baskerville.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 1995 18:57:45 GMT
Lines: 89
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:31916 comp.ai.philosophy:30963 sci.logic:13212 sci.cognitive:8616

In article <GUDEMAN.95Jul27091026@baskerville.cs.arizona.edu>,
David Gudeman <gudeman@cs.arizona.edu> wrote:
................
>My own reason for rejecting mechanism might be considered irrational
>in a sense: I cannot imagine what sort of theory would even count as
>an explanation of cognition in terms of physical events.  One can
>imagine an account of brain physiology which successfully predicts
>cognitive events in terms of physical events, but this would not count
>as an explanation.  How does one get from a proposition involving
>mass, charge, position and other physical properties to a proposition
>involving intent, belief, reference and other mental properties?  The
>gulf seems to be inherently uncrossable.
>
I am a bit puzzled - if the account of brain physiology predicted cognitive
events, it would mean that it mapped a way from physical properties to 
cognitive events, wouldn't it?
If these cognitive events (as predicted from brain physiology) had any 
empirically verifiable consequences (discussion about Popper's falsification 
is relevent here) then such a theory could count as their explanation,
assuming observations would not falsify predictions of such consequences. If 
they did not, then their description would have a value of a Harlequin novel.

>People like to point to the growth of scientific theory as evidence
>that things can be explained that were thought impossible of
>explanation previously, but the cases are highly divergent.  Consider
>the mechanical explanation of heat.  Heat, if construed as a physical
>event (rather than a perceptual one) has the property of location, and
>has apparent physical sources and effects.  Everyone always viewed
>heat as essentially physical, even if not as mechanical in the usual
>sense.  All of what is known about heat is known either physically or
>by touch, and the mechanical explanation of heat only explains the
>physical facts (including the physical effects on human skin), not the
>perceptual facts.
>
I am puzzled again - "by touch" is the same as "physically", but what
perceptual facts about heat you have in mind which are not physical facts??

..............
>I am aware that such people exist, but when I debate them, I prefer to
>ignore irrational elements of their position, since such elements seem
>to me to be inherently personal and of little interest to another
>person.  I guess this means that I am not addressing the true source
>of their beliefs and am therefore not going to be successful at
>changing their minds.  But changing the other persons mind is not
>usually my goal in a debate.
>
Just curious - what is usually your goal in a debate?
.................
>A reasonable line of research, as long as one does not make undue
>suppositions about the nature of the taxonomy.  In particular, just
>because a particular model of the mind is esthetic, well-organized,
>and capable of useful predictions, that does not mean the model is any
>truer than any other model capable of making a similar class of
>predictions.
>
What criteria of being "truer" or "less true" do you use?
..................
>The presence of the mechanism is superfluous except as a proof of
>correctness.  What is being investigated is how human behaviors may be
>described by rules.  Many (perhaps all) human behaviors are subject to
>such description, including language, social interactions and
>architecture (I may have a reference for this if you are interested).
>While it may be interesting to see how well behaviors may be described
>by rule sets, the production of such rules tells us more about human
>ingenuity and ability to organize data than it tells us about the
>sources of the behavior.
>
If deducing rules which could describe behavior would not satisfy you,
what do you mean by "sources of behavior"?
...........
>I don't know why you should be distressed by this, since everything
>else also works by some kind of magic that can never be understood or
>explained.

If so, then what is the point of debating any science question?
It seems to me that your notions of "understanding" and "explanation" are so
idealized as to make these terms totally useless. Reminds me of people who
look for "ideal love" (or "ideal woman/man") and end up their lives
empty-handed :-).
>--
>					David Gudeman
>gudeman@cs.arizona.edu

Andrzej
-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Instructional and Research Computing  what they think and not what they see.
pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca                           Huang Po
