Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and consciousness
Message-ID: <jqbD03qq2.7Kz@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <19941129.084940.318@almaden.ibm.com> <D03I45.FoB@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 22:34:50 GMT
Lines: 34

In article <D03I45.FoB@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>,
Andrzej Pindor <pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>In article <19941129.084940.318@almaden.ibm.com>,
> <mpriestley@VNET.IBM.COM> wrote:
>>Andrzej Pindor writes:
>>>you can hold such a view. When people had no way of distinguishing between
>>>gold and fool's gold, what sense does it make to say that they only mistakenly
>>>thought that fool's gold was gold?? They used the word 'gold' for a substance
>>>with given properties. How do you know that in fact they did not mean mica
>>
>>I agree with you: the word "gold" at the time arguably included both substances
>>(fool's gold and real gold, as we now distinguish them).
>>
>>However, the pertinence of the discussion to AI and consciousness lies in
>>a different direction.  The original point, I believe, was meant as a
>>rebuttal of the "if I can't see a difference, there is no difference".
>
>Not really. This particular discussion was about whether ancient gold-lovers
>were "wrong" if they called "gold" something which is not gold by to-day's
>standards (element Au), even though they were unable to distinguish this
>something from element Au. 

Actually, the original question was whether, without "scientific" criteria,
categorization is necessarily subjective.  If "scientific" is intended to
mean "objective", then it seems tautological.  Jeff Dalton then asked whether
we couldn't just say that some subjective opinions were right and others were
wrong.  And I would say, not without objective criteria.  People who call
pyrite gold are always wrong if there is wide enough agreement that one of
the properties of gold is malleability and whether or not pyrite is flaky
is a matter of simple observation, not mere opinion.  Trying to break a chip
off is sufficient as a "scientific test" in this context.  Perhaps this whole
discussion is confused by a bad example.
-- 
<J Q B>
