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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Message-ID: <1992Mar25.003556.6063@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <1992Mar24.042009.12510@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1992Mar24.051654.18747@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Mar24.112548.10215@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 92 00:35:56 GMT
Lines: 31

In article <1992Mar24.112548.10215@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>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.

This appears to be a rerun of the argument in
<1992Mar18.095140.9984@husc3.harvard.edu>, which was refuted in
<1992Mar18.202206.10276@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>.

>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.

I note that the requisite bound on input length is 1.  Arbitrarily
long inputs are redundant here.  A construction only needs to satisfy
strong conditionals of the form <state S1, input I> -> <state S2>, 
for single inputs I.  If your construction satisfied those
conditionals, which it doesn't, then the rest would fall out.

-- 
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."


