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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and consciousness
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References: <D000q2.8pn@spss.com> <D01MoH.Ir9@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <D03Gtp.1Ew@spss.com>
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 18:49:29 GMT
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In article <D03Gtp.1Ew@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <D01MoH.Ir9@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
>Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> 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.  What does it mean to say that they were wrong?  That
>>>they were mistaken in their beliefs, right?  But if they thought that
>>>fool's gold was the same as what we would call gold (the element Au),
>>>there is no belief of theirs which was incorrect;
>>
>>It depends on how they thought of gold.  For instance, did they
>>have it as "anything with the following properties: P1, P2, ..."
>
>In which case, if P1, P2, ... did not distinguish gold from fool's gold,
>they cannot be said to have been wrong.

Of course.  It depends on what the properties are.  I said that much
in one article, though perhaps not the one you're quoting here.

>>Or was it "anything like this stuff in my ring, these coins in
>>that chest over there, etc"?  In the latter case, they would
>>have been wrong about fool's gold and may well have been able
>>to figure out a convenient test.  
>
>You can't just say "it's gold if it's *like* that stuff there"; you have
>to have some notion, even if you can't express it propositionally, of 
>*how much* likeness is required. 

Yes, and they could have had a notion that was sufficient for them
to be wrong about fool's gold, I would say.  Exactly how this would
work is something we might discuss.

> And again, if the amount of likeness
>included fool's gold, it can't be said that this belief was wrong.
>You can't sneak in "made of the same element" into the medieval definition
>of "gold" under cover of the word "like".

Please don't suppose that I am arguing that they must have been wrong,
or that <meaning change and so they weren't wrong> doesn't account for
this case.  Maybe it does.  What I'm saying is that it's not the
only possibility.

>>In any case, it seems to me that if you start to think their "gold"
>>might be such that they weren't wrong to regard fool's gold as gold,
>>then you must also start to think that out term "gold" is a rather
>>imperfect translation of theirs.  
>
>Welcome to the world of historical semantics.  Yep, words change their
>meaning, and one can grossly misread an old text by supplying modern
>meanings where they don't belong.  It's not a situation that increases
>one's confidence in words having absolute and objective meanings.

Since I've never claimed words have absolute and objective meanings,
I'm not sure why you're attributing that view to me.

Words do change meaning, but usually there's some continuity as
well.

Now, presumably you'd accept that a miner, 49er, might have thought
some fool's gold was gold.  He may have lacked much in the way of
relevant detailed knowledge.  Nonetheless, by "gold" he meant
that valuable metal that he's see in rings, coins, etc; he may
also have been able to list certain properties explicitly.
He thought a bit of fools' gold was gold (the same stuff he's
seen in rings, etc, that valuable metal), and he was wrong.

We can ask what continuity in the meaning of "gold" is required
to extend the possibility of such mistakes further into the past,
and we can consider whether that continuity obtained or not.
That is my view, at least.

>>So was the property of being made out of gold (their notion)
>>a subjective property?  I don't see why.  If the content of
>>the term changed, it could be an objective property both
>>before and after the change -- it would just have to be a
>>different property.
>
>Curious that you say so when you yourself suggested above that the meaning
>of "gold" might have been defined by likeness to some physical exemplars.
>That being made of element Au is an objective property I can accept;
>that being "like" something else is objective I find dubious in the extreme.

I'm happy to consider various cases and possibilities.  I'm not
so happy to say all the answers are already clear (to all but fools,
perhaps).

Now, I think "of the same kind as this <object>" is an objective
property for some kinds.  For instance, for so-called natural kinds
(as opposed to, say, nominal kinds).  So for gold, it's an objective
property, since gold is a natural kind.  Many would disagree with
this view.  I'm not firmly comitted to it myself.  It does have some
problems, which might be discussed. 

However, at this point in my article, I was considering the view,
expressed by someone else, that the content of the term changed.
In that case, why couldn't there be objective properties both
before and after?  This can be considered separately from the
issue of natural kinds (and various other views I've expressed).

-- jeff
