From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wupost!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Mon Mar  9 18:35:14 EST 1992
Article 4266 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wupost!uunet!tdatirv!sarima
>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Message-ID: <470@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 4 Mar 92 20:33:58 GMT
References: <13555@optima.cs.arizona.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 113

In article <13555@optima.cs.arizona.edu> gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman) writes:
|In article  <465@tdatirv.UUCP> Stanley Friesen writes:
|]In article <1992Feb29.133816.9316@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
|]Which has failed because it *is* a priori, and in general I do not accept
|]a priori arguments unless they are *fully* based on verifiable facts.
|
|If by "verifiable", you mean "empirically verifiable", then an
|argument based on verifiable facts cannot be a priori.  The term "a
|priori" means "prior to any emprical observations".

You are probably right here.  I was mainly talking about verifying the premises and assumptions, but even that probably, by definition, is not a priori
reasonong.

| Since all
|mathematical proofs are arguments a priori, your statement amounts to
|denying all of mathematics.

Actually, I left out one additional qualifier.  A will accept a premise
if it is empirically verified, *or* if it is true *by* *definition*.
The latter qualifier allows mathematics, since all of pure mathematics
is true by definition, or by derivation from axioms that are true by
definition.

Now when you get into applied mathematics (for instance physics), then I
require empirical verification that the mathematical model chosen applies
to the system being studied.

| I don't think you really meant that did
|you (see below before you answer)?  What you probably mean is that you
|think some of Searle's premises are matters of empirical observation
|and are therefore not really a priori.  If so, which premises do you
|have in mind?

All of them that are not purely definitional, that is all of them that are
not pure, abstract mathematics, but are rather intended to apply to real,
exiting entities.   The moment *any* premise is applied to a real object
its applicibility *must* be verified.

|]But I *am* addressing it on a 'philosophical' ground.  I am saying that his
|]premises lack observational validity, and must be verified before being used
|]in any argument, at least if ti is to be conclusive.

|Unless you are willing to take this anti-rational approach and deny
|the validity of a priori reasoning altogether, you cannot refute
|Searle just by demanding empirical evidence.

It is true, I was not entirely clear.  But I *do* require empirical
verification before I will apply mathematical models to real phenomena.
Even statistics, in real life probabilities must either be measured or
at least tested.  This is, for instance, what Monte Carlo simulations
are for.

| By the very fact that
|Searle has given an argument a priori, he limits your rational
|response to arguments a priori (which is what I think Mikhail was
|getting at).

If so, then he is, in my mind, also restricting his argument to abstract
mathematical entities.  If he wants to apply his a priori reasoning to
real entities, like computers and people, he must *demonstrate* that
his premises *actually* aply to the real entities as they do to his abstract
mathematical entities.

| You must find fault with either his premises or his
|deductions.  _One_ way of faulting a premise is to argue that it is a
|matter of observation.  But to do that you have to identify the
|particular premise, show that it _is_ a premise, and show how a denial
|of the premise does not lead to a contradiction.

I thought I had done this, I have specified *several* of his premises that
I doubt, and which I believe to have observational consequences if applied
to real entities.

And I, and others, have certainly presented what appears to me to be
self-consistent interpretations of the models that result from using
contrary premises.  Now it is true that some other people do not consider 
any of these models to be adequate, but that does *not* prove them to be
inconsistant.  At the worst it shows them to be incomplete, but so is every
other model used by science.

What model?

	Well a *brief* summary of the one I prefer, for now at least: 
I treat the brain as a data transformation device, that is a computational
system.  Its primary function is that of a controller for a living body.
In principle this is no different than a computer controller embedded in
any other device or system.

It is true that the brain uses a unary encoding rather than a binary,
and is wired to perform fuzzy logic preferentially, rather than Aristotelian
logic like manufactured computers.  But since there are mappings that allow
either to be implemented in terms of the other, this does not seem to me
to be a significant difference.

All of the various components of 'mind' (understanding, qualia, intention,
volition, self-awarenenss, and so on) are associated with identifiable
sequences of activitiy in the brain, and thus appear to be the *result* of
those activity patterns.

Now, notice that *all* of the above material involves concepts that are at
least in principle empirically verifiable.  Thus, if the model is wrong,
it will *eventually* become obvious that it is so, and I will be able to
adjust it to match the new evidence.

Now, unless the above model is *internally* inconsistant, then it is a valid
alternative to Searle's, and by being so, it makes Searle's a priori
argument inconclusive.  It does not even have to be true to do that, since
*any* alternative that is mathematically consistant casts doubt on an
a priori argument.
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)



