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Article 1733 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Daniel Dennett
Message-ID: <1991Nov28.171624.5975@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 28 Nov 91 22:16:22 GMT
References: <15112@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1991Nov22.115929.5757@husc3.harvard.edu> <15188@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
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In article <15188@castle.ed.ac.uk> 
cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:

>In article <1991Nov22.115929.5757@husc3.harvard.edu> 
>zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>>In article <15112@castle.ed.ac.uk> 
>>cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:

CM:
>>>So, the intellectually dishonest Dennett and his ilk turns out not
>>>really to be well exemplified by Dennett so much as those in general
>>>collected in Boden's anthology, who turn out to be best exemplified by
>>>McCulloch and Pitts -- whose paper is arguably the oldest AI paper in
>>>existence. Well, I suppose we should be thankful for that -- you can't
>>>really go any further back than McCulloch and Pitts!

MZ:
>>Dennett will do just fine as a whipping boy; feel free to address my
>>article expressly dedicated to his foibles, fallacies, and frauds.
>>However, at this time, let's occupy ourselves with more capable targets.

CM:
>I don't think your Dennett critique made it this far on the net, but
>since you've promised to review the "Consciousness" book, I'm happy to
>wait for that.

Correction: I said that I might do so; having availed myself of Danny
Dearest's weighty tome, for the past week I've been taking potshots at its
contents, complete with page references.  I believe that this fulfils my
responsibility to substantiate the charges if intellectual dishonesty; to
do any more would be tantamount to flogging a dead horse.

CM:
>>>On the way I have also managed to collect some idea of what you think
>>>is wrong with the ideas of these foolish AI supporters: it has
>>>something to do with an implicit assumption that Man is finite, based
>>>on some presumed relationship between Man and a Turing Machine. 

MZ:
>>Not quite.  Turing machines have infinite "memory", i.e. tape; finite state
>>automata, like neural nets, most certainly don't.  See McCulloch and Pitts
>>on the infamous page 37: "every net, if furnished with a tape [...] can
>>compute only such numbers as can a Turing machine, [...and] each of the
>>latter numbers can be computed by such a net".  Pray tell, where does the
>>tape come from?

CM:
>If your argument is based on the lack of an infinite tape in any
>practical realisation of a so-called Turing-equivalent machine, then you
>do need to tell us where, in _your_ model of the human mind, the
>infinite tape comes from -- or whatever it is that in your view provides
>the human mind with its supramechanical virtue.

I don't think anyone has managed an adequate mind-body theory yet; however
this fact in no way obliges me to come up with an alternative of my own in
order to point out the inadequacy of a particular materialist conception.

MZ:
>>>>The implications of Searle's argument are painfully obvious: semantical
>>>>knowledge must be represented in, and accessible by, the mind of any
>>>>intelligent being.  Pray tell, where are these issues adequately addressed?

CM:
>>>I don't think anybody is yet capable of addressing them. They are
>>>generally recognised as serious issues in the AI community (which is
>>>precisely _why_ the Chinese Room gets anthologised and debated so
>>>much), and some people are working on them, despite being handicapped
>>>by intellectual dishonesty :-) As it happens, there is still plenty we
>>>can do before the lack of resolution of this issue becomes an obstacle
>>>to further progress, so we (AI researchers) don't actually have to sit
>>>around twiddling our thumbs until someone manages to address them
>>>properly.

MZ:
>>Sorry, Chris, but you are mistaken on two counts.  First of all, Dennett
>>does indeed claim that he has refuted Searle; see his latest book,
>>pp.435--40

CM:
>There are plenty of weighty people who claim to have refuted Searle,
>starting with the originals in the BBS, not to mention hundreds of
>net-philosophers :-) However, just as Searle can "prove" the
>impossibility of squeezing semantics from syntax without necessarily
>having to _explain_ how people manage the semantic trick, so it is
>possible to "refute" Searle without necessarily having to explain how a
>machine can mean: 

Yet Dennett hasn't managed either to refute Searle, or to come up with an
account of how a machine can mean.

CM:
>                  it is possible to demonstrate error without knowing
>the truth.

Exactly.

MZ:
>>Secondly, there is no shortage of good semantical theories of
>>fragments of natural languages.

CM:
>They all beg crucial questions by depending on what are still magical
>qualities of the human mind.

On the contrary, you beg a crucial question by assuming that human mind is
bereft of abstract powers.

MZ:
>>As I have argued earlier, no adequate
>>semantical theory is compatible with reductive materialism, on the natural
>>assumption that the brain is a finite state automaton.  Prove me wrong.

CM:
>1. There is as yet no adequate semantical theory, and I don't think
>anybody yet has a good idea what one will look like.

Have you studied much Platonist semantical theory, Chris?  Have you read
Frege, Church, Montague, Linsky, or Katz?  Do you know what you are talking
about?

CM:
>2. Strong reductionism doesn't hold water, let alone protoplasm. How
>about weak reductionism?

Don't give me labels; give me theories.

CM:
>3. I don't think it follows from the materialist view that the brain is
>an FSA, but I think what you mean is that a materialist brain can't
>avoid being finite in its capacity, since it is finite in mass and
>therefore representational capacity. This seems quite irrelevant,
>however, since I am sure that nobody doubts the finite span of my life,
>and the inferior capacity of my brain and mind compared to Einstein's,
>yet nobody supposes that these severe limitations on my mental capacity
>forbid my equal participation in the semantic world.

As someone justly noted during this discussion, certain models of classical
mechanics permit infinite iteration of successively smaller motion cycles
within a finite time span.  What makes you thing that a semantical analogue
of infinite recursion is physically impossible?

Finally, I believe that any adequate semantical theory would of necessity
have to comprehend all of mathematics, and hence in some sense would be
unconstrained by physical limitations of the actual world, encompassing
also all that is conceivable, including unactualized mathematical and
logical possibility.  This is the most important reason for inevitable
failure of empiricist and materialist attempts at constructing an adequate
theory of meaning, and, ipso facto, an adequate theory of mind.

>-- 
>Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
>Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
>5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205


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