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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and consciousness
Message-ID: <D073Hr.9EB@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
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Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 18:03:26 GMT
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In article <D009F1.F03@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <3bdqsd$7r6@news1.shell>, Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com> wrote:
>>markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>>>Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>>Suppose people counted "fool's gold" as gold in the past.  Surely it's
>>>>possible to meaningfully say they were wrong.
>>
>>>Surely it's not.

> [...]

>No one is making wrongness relative.  I am only trying to expose the
>incoherence of claims that outmoded beliefs are "wrong" when the
>definitions of the terms used have changed.  

And I'm saying that's not always all there is to be said.

>Suppose we decided tomorrow to divide "blue" into two terms, as Russian
>does.  We will use "blue" for dark blue and "eulb" for sky blue.  Your
>and Jeff's position seems to be that a present statement that the sky is 
>blue is *wrong*, because the sky is in face eulb.  And I'm saying that
>that's absurd.

Good thing it's not my position then.  :->

The issue I entered on was objective properties, not dividing terms.
Moreover, what I say in the quote above ("suppose people counted...")
is not about dividing terms either.  Sure, *if* people said "let's
divide this term `gold' so that those useless rocks over there don't
count as gold any more", then you'd be right.  But if that's how you
think it went, that's something you have to show, not presuppose.

-- jeff
