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Article 1486 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Daniel Dennett
Summary: where are those reductionist accounts?
Message-ID: <1991Nov21.231253.5737@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 22 Nov 91 04:12:49 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1991Nov21.231253.5737
References: <1991Nov18.224139.21896@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> 
 <1991Nov20.083647.5664@husc3.harvard.edu> <1991Nov20.223212.19719@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
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In article <1991Nov20.223212.19719@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> 
john@publications.ccc.monash.edu.au (John Wilkins) writes:

>In article <1991Nov20.083647.5664@husc3.harvard.edu>, 
>zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

JW:
>> >                                                           So much of
>> >what used to be irreducible about mind has been reduced - language
>> >learning, visual recognition, emotion - or is promising to be, that
>> >a believer in Occam's Razor has every reason to be confident that the
>> >obscurantism of occult properties such as "Consciousness" have no real
>> >future.

MZ:
>> I believe I'll call you on that.  Kindly outline a reductive account of
>> language learning, visual recognition, or emotion, and stand back to watch
>> it blow up in your face, or retract your above statement.  Moreover, my
>> naive understanding of Occam's razor indicates that its application depends
>> on prior recognition of particular ontology, as well as on a choice between
>> the merits of theoretical simplicity and ontological parsimony.  In other
>> words, if "occultism" results in a simpler theory, as is the case in all of
>> mathematics, you can stuff the razor.

JW:
>Uh uh, it isn't up to me, it's up to those professionals in neurophysiological
>psychology and other such disciplines. However, a dated but still very
>interesting account is given of many of these (now uncontentious) reductions
>in Stephen Rose's _The Conscious Brain_. My point is that, given all the
>successes of the reductive program - and they are undeniable, aren't they -
>it's up to those Platonists and dualists who wish to deny that this is
>the path to take *in science* to show why. Dualism is ontically unparsimonious
>on any interpretation: it posits two realms of being. IF one will do, whether
>it is the mental or the physical, then that is simpler and to be preferred.
>The rest is a matter of research success, and the mentalist program has been
>stalled for over three centuries, while the physicalist account leaps ahead
>from week to week.

Sorry, John, better try it again.  The shoe is on your foot: tell me about
those marvelous reductionist successes, either in your own words, or by
scanning the book you are citing.  Like I said, I happen to know just
enough about the fields in question to be confident that I can blow your
account to bits.  As for the ontological profligacy of dualism, if it
should result in a simpler, more plausible theory, I'll be happy to live
with it.  After all, Occam's razor applies to theoretical complexity as
well: "Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora."  And if push
should come to shove, not sharing Quine's fondness for desert landscapes,
I'll simply say: "The more the merrier".

Moreover, you are neglecting such alternatives as Spinoza's Shopenhauer's,
Strawson's, and O'Shaughnessy's double aspect theories, or Davidson's
anomological, or anomalous monism, leaping forth to embrace nomological
monism.  Fine,I say, but recognize this as the act of faith that it is, and
stop claiming that the burden of proof lies on the skeptic.  After all,
Neurath and company have failed most abjectly to give a comprehensive
physical description of the most elementary intentional states.  So what is
it that makes you so confident that you can give a physical description of
intentional predicates?

Once again, don't tell me: "But it's the specialists who'll inevitably come
to do that!"  Like Dennett, you are playing the drummer boy to an army of
pseudo-scientific profiteers.  Stand up for your convictions, or retract
your claims of reductionist successes.

JW:
>A semantic argument against the possibility of success (you are not being
>skeptical in tone, you are instead very dogmatic: "show me X and I'll show
>you why it can't succeed" indeed!) is so much sophistry. Words do not
>have priority over the phenomena, and the appearance is ALL in favour of
>a reductive account to date.

Sorry John, better try it again.  Language is a phenomenon just as surely
as the material stuff.  If you can't account for reducibility of language,
it's incumbent upon you to shut up.

JW:
>As to the nature of AI, so far it has given us some remarkable tools for
>making computers do things that look like what used to be thought the
>exclusive domain of mind. Mentalism is dying the death of a thousand
>qualifications, like the God of the gaps who could decree the falsity 
>of this or that scientific theory - from Galileo to Darwin, including 
>Newton on the way. If mind is a physical phenomenon, and I think I am
>at least on a coherent path in thinking it to be, then it can be physically
>modelled on a sophisticated enough system. Whether a Turing Machine-like
>system is able to so model is a matter for empirical research (I doubt it).
>The attempt to model consciousness physically will (i) teach us a lot about
>dynamic information processing systems (and therefore applied computing)
>and (ii) teach us a lot about what sorts of processes are going on in our
>brains. More power to AI researchers.

Once again, having spent the past fourteen years developing software, I'll
call you on this.  Where are those wonderful AI tools like the natural
language understanding and translation programs, expert systems that would
do medical and mechanical diagnostics as well as, or better than humans,
visual pattern recognition systems, robots that can walk on uneven terrain,
and countless other things that were promised so long ago?  Finally, note
that your statement that if mind is a physical phenomenon, then it can be
physically modelled on a sophisticated enough system, contains a hidden
premiss, you have to assume not just monism, but nomological monism.  Not
that I wish to attack any claim you might make in this regard, but you
might be interested in perusing Davidson's "Mental Events."

'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`
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: Qu'est-ce qui est bien?  Qu'est-ce qui est laid?         Harvard   :
: Qu'est-ce qui est grand, fort, faible...                 doesn't   :
: Connais pas! Connais pas!                                 think    :
:                                                             so     :
: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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