From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!csd.unb.ca!morgan.ucs.mun.ca!nstn.ns.ca!bonnie.concordia.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!access.usask.ca!kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca!unixg.ubc.ca!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!n Tue Apr  7 23:22:00 EDT 1992
Article 4690 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Xref: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca sci.philosophy.tech:2412 comp.ai.philosophy:4690
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!csd.unb.ca!morgan.ucs.mun.ca!nstn.ns.ca!bonnie.concordia.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!access.usask.ca!kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca!unixg.ubc.ca!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!n
ews.bbn.com!hsdndev!husc-news.harvard.edu!zariski!zeleny
>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Summary: Putnam's result still stands
Message-ID: <1992Mar24.112548.10215@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 24 Mar 92 16:25:45 GMT
References: <1992Mar24.025128.9379@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> 
 <1992Mar24.042009.12510@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1992Mar24.051654.18747@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
Lines: 90
Nntp-Posting-Host: zariski.harvard.edu

In article <1992Mar24.051654.18747@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes: 

>In article <1992Mar24.042009.12510@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
>bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs) writes: 

BS:
>>  This is not really an original point -- Putnam says the same
>>thing, I think -- but bringing counterfactuals into the
>>picture only muddies it.  The problem, as Hofstadter very
>>adroitly shows in "G\"odel, Escher, Bach" and "Metamagical
>>Themas", is that making the condition (the "If not X" part)
>>of a counterfactual true requires changing some aspect of
>>the world, but it is often not obvious what aspect or aspects
>>to change.  As Hofstadter puts it, it is not obvious which
>>things are "slippable" and which are not.

DC:
>It's not clear who you're responding to, but if it's me (presumably
>my argument about counterfactuals), then:
>
>1.  Putnam's point about counterfactuals concerns a very different
>matter, as I pointed out a few days ago.

The relevance of the difference remains to be shown through an adequate
treatment of the logic of counterfactuals.  Such a treatment, if
accomplished through the usual possible-worlds framework, will require
haecceitism (in the sense of Kaplan: the doctrine that holds that the
question of transworld identity of a given type of entities can be posed
without reference to common attributes or behavior) with respect to FSA
state-descriptions, i.e. allowing trans-world identity relations for the
same.  Am I the only one who sees this assumption as inherently ludicrous?

Consider: a state is activated by a strongly counterfactual input, i.e. a
physical, or, worse, logical impossibility, -- "if A & not-A, let X".  Does
X play any causal role in determining the characteristics of the automaton
in question?  Now consider the practically (and, for all we know,
theoretically) undecidable question of physical and logical compossibility,
insofar as it bears on the issue of evaluating your counterfactuals.  To
wit, deciding whether a given state can be realized would require logical
and physical omniscience: recall that not all contradictions are as obvious
as the one I adduced above...

Now consider a possible world with a different physics, but, naturally,
still the same logic.  So the compossibility of the causal factors that
determine the realizability, nay, the very individuation of your machine's
state-descriptions would be all different.  Get the picture?

DC:
>2.  The counterfactuals that I require the system to satisfy are
>entirely well-defined.  They are of the form "if the system is in
>state S1, and input I is received, then it will transit into state
>S2".  This must hold for any physical state of the system that
>falls under S1, and any physical input that falls under I.  There's
>none of the looseness or underspecification that one gets with some
>counterfactuals (e.g. the well-known "if Bizet and Verdi were
>compatriots, then..."?  Bizet would be Italian?  Verdi would be
>French?).  The implicit universal quantifier removes the need to
>rely on such notions as slippability or closeness of possible worlds.

As evidenced by the above, you have failed to think the issue through.
Still, suppose that I grant you your point; then, as I've said earlier, all
that remains to be done is to interpret the states of Putnam's automaton as
ordered pairs <state, input> of a FSA (cf. the relevant comments on p.124);
follow this by running through enough input/state combinations to exhaust
the finite combinatorial possibilities afforded by the machine's table.
Finally, you do the mapping.  In this way, there will be no counterfactual
possibilities left unaccounted for.  Just string all possible traces
together in a sequential order.  Given the original context of determining
the theoretical validity of functionalism, the requisite bound on input
length is easily obtained on the basis of temporal limitations on the
length of human life.

>-- 
>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."


`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'
: 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                                                     :
: 872 Massachusetts Ave., Apt. 707                                   :
: Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139           (617) 661-8151            :
: email zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu or zeleny@HUMA1.BITNET            :
:                                                                    :
'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`


