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Article 4493 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Message-ID: <1992Mar17.014500.8635@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 17 Mar 92 01:45:00 GMT
References: <44855@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
Lines: 64

In article <44855@dime.cs.umass.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:

>	That's it.  You can see that the mathematical content of
>his "theorem" is nearly trivial.  All the subtlety and complexity
>resides in the I/O to and from the math:  whether his assumptions
>which form the input to the mathematics are justified, and whether
>his interpretation of the output of the mathematics is sound.

Well, if we're doomed to endure Nietzsche's eternal recurrence on
this newsgroup, at least Putnam's rocks haven't cycled around as many
times as the Chinese room.

The mathematics is indeed trivial; its main point is to establish
that an object will be in different states at different times.  But
as I said last time the subject comes up, to implement an FSA it
is not sufficient that an object go through a particular sequence
of states (e.g. "ABABAB...") compatible with that FSA.  It must
also satisfy all the counterfactual conditionals corresponding to
the transitions in the FSA's state table.

>From my last posting on this subject, which didn't meet with any
serious argument (I'd hate to see it become folk wisdom that a rock
implements any FSA, just through the claim being repeated enough
times):

----
My problems with Putnam's "proof" are roughly

1. He sets it up so that the rock does indeed go through some actual
sequence of states ABABAB... during a given time interval.  But an
FSA must also satisfy counterfactuals e.g. of the form "if it had
been in state C, then it would have transited into state D".  Given
that the physical states corresponding to most states C (i.e., all
those that aren't in the actual desired sequence between 12:00 and
12:07) aren't even defined, this would seem to be a problem.

and, perhaps more seriously,

2. An FSA certainly must satisfy counterfactuals of the form "if
in state S, input I had come in, then it would have transited to
state T", for all counterfactual inputs I.  Putnam makes some
tentative gestures in the direction of handling a certain pattern
of actual inputs, but says nothing at all about handling
counterfactual inputs.  As far as I can tell, the required
counterfactual sensitivity is entirely lacking.
----

Elsewhere (the "functionalism implies behaviorism article) Joseph
O'Rourke writes:

>Many discussants in these newsgroups claim to be functionalists
>about mind, but few admit to being behavorists (although their
>arguments often indicate otherwise).  The functionalists who reject 
>behaviorism might be interested to know that Hilary Putnam claims to
>establish in "Representation and Reality" that functionalism
>implies behaviorism.

There's no reason to be impressed by this either, as it's entirely
derivative on the rock/FSA "theorem".

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


