From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!bronze!chalmers Tue Feb 11 15:25:31 EST 1992
Article 3564 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!bronze!chalmers
>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Strong AI and panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Feb7.013657.9690@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 7 Feb 92 01:36:57 GMT
References: <1992Feb5.185805.15433@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Feb6.053810.22191@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Feb6.191559.12739@psych.toronto.edu>
Distribution: world,local
Organization: Indiana University
Lines: 40

In article <1992Feb6.191559.12739@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:

>No doubt.  My question, however, is *why* one would want to change
>the thesis.  If the counterexample you want to rule out is rocks
>implementing FSAa, I want to know *why* you want to rule that out, and
>if the reason is not simply ad hoc.

We have a pretheoretical notion of causal organization according to
which it is obvious that brains are more complex than simple clocks.
The notion of implementing an FSA has come about at least in part to
formalize that notion.  If it turns out that a given definition entails
that simple clocks have the same causal organization as brains, then
there's something wrong with that definition.

>This objection assumes that you can distinguish between functions
>"in the enviroment" and functions "in the entity."  I have yet to
>see a good way of telling these apart.   Also remember that 
>FSAs can (like SHRDLU, my favorite example), *include* a "virtual
>environment".                 

One can draw the boundary wherever one likes, but once it's drawn
you have a way of distinguishing.  For a human, one might draw the
boundary at the skin, or around the central nervous system, or
around the brain.  For SHRDLU, if you want it to turn out that
the "virtual environment" is part of the environment rather than
part of the machine, then you draw the boundary accordingly.

>You're not sure if "restrictions...are needed" to do *what*?  To
>accomplish *what*?  If it's just to rule out the possibility that
>rocks can implement an arbitrary FSA, then this seems suspiciously
>ad hoc to me...

To avoid the conclusion that simple clocks can implement an arbitrary
FSA, which does violence to the notion that FSAs were supposed to
formalize.  There's nothing ad hoc about this at all.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


