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Article 4524 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: orourke@unix1.cs.umass.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Message-ID: <45005@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 18 Mar 92 00:19:47 GMT
References: <44855@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Mar17.014500.8635@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <44993@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Mar17.224156.9177@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
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Reply-To: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Organization: Smith College, Northampton, MA, US
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In article <1992Mar17.224156.9177@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <44993@dime.cs.umass.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>
>>Putnam is well aware of the counterfactuals objection, and devotes pages
>>96-105 of his book to refuting it. [...] 
>
>All this is irrelevant to my point.  On those pages, Putnam is concerned
>with the question of the satisfaction of counterfactuals like "if
>A had not happened, B would not have happened", and points out
>that the truth-conditions for statements like these are problematic.
>I'm concerned with the much more straightforward matter of making
>sure that the implementation actually satisfies all the transition
>relations in the state-table; e.g. such that if it is in state C,
>it will transit to state D, and so on. [...]

	Ah, I see!  That is an excellent point!  He does seem to
show only that a particular *trace* of the running of an FSA can
be 'implemented' by a rock, not that the FSA itself, with all its
inherent possibilities, can be implemented.  Your point seems to 
me to be devastating.


