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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and consciousness
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References: <19941129.084940.318@almaden.ibm.com> <D03I45.FoB@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> <jqbD03qq2.7Kz@netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 19:44:41 GMT
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In article <jqbD03qq2.7Kz@netcom.com> jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter) writes:
>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.  

I did?  Where?

I almost always find your version of what I said to be a distortion.
I assume that's not your intention, but could you possibly cut me
a little slack from time to time?  I might just mean something
more reasonable than you first think.

>And I would say, not without objective criteria. 

Ok.

> 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. 

I agree.

> Trying to break a chip
>off is sufficient as a "scientific test" in this context. 

Again I agree.

>Perhaps this whole discussion is confused by a bad example.

I certainly has some problems.

-- jd
