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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Message-ID: <1992Mar28.100350.10367@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 28 Mar 92 15:03:48 GMT
References: <1992Mar25.003556.6063@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> 
 <1992Mar25.094354.10243@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Mar26.034816.29572@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
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In article <1992Mar26.034816.29572@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes: 

>In article <1992Mar25.094354.10243@husc3.harvard.edu>
>zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes: 

MZ:
>>It is.  Your response never made it here; please repost.

>Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
>Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
>Message-ID: <1992Mar18.202206.10276@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
>Organization: Indiana University
>References: <1992Mar17.231452.9979@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Mar18.045939.3084@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Mar18.095140.9984@husc3.harvard.edu>
>Date: Wed, 18 Mar 92 20:22:06 GMT

Ah, yes: befuddled by your misunderstanding of my point, I have allowed
this to expire without responding to it.  I hope we can reach some
understanding this time around.

>In article <1992Mar18.095140.9984@husc3.harvard.edu>
>zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes: 

>>In article <1992Mar18.045939.3084@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
>>chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes: 

DC:
>>>The reason being, of course, that the table imposes lots of *other*
>>>constraints on the system, not just about its actual behaviour, but
>>>about its counterfactual behaviour.  e.g. "if the system were in
>>>state C, it would transit into state D", where state C is a state
>>>that never occurs in the particular sequence in question.

MZ:
>>I call for charity: to me, Putnam's text is suggesting a sequence
>>exhaustive of all states that characterize the FSA.

DC:
>Ah, good old Charity.  In any case, this won't work, as there's
>no reason to believe that such a sequence will exist.  Most FSA's
>don't have the property of reversibility, i.e. that if there is
>a path from state A to state B then there is a path from state B
>to state A.  It would be particularly surprising if an FSA intended
>to model human cognitive function had this property: as far as I
>can tell, once I've exited my current state, no sequence of external
>inputs is likely to take me back to an identical state.  Without
>reversibility, no actual sequence can try on all state/input
>combinations.  Any FSA that models cognitive function is also likely
>to have the property of exclusivity, i.e. that there exist states
>A and B such that there's no path either from A to B or from B to A.
>so there won't even be a sequence that includes every state.

Irrelevant.  Although ideally we would like to get a trace that is both
Eulerian and Hamiltonian, this is only desirable for aesthetic reasons.
Your automaton needn't have a connected graph, for all I care: just pick a
selection of initial states and input strings exhaustive of all of its
combinatorial possibilities, and string their traces together.

MZ:
>>This is easy: first, you 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.

DC:
>See above.  I should note that even if such a sequence were possible,
>it still wouldn't provide an adequate correspondence of logical
>states to physical states.  e.g. take a 2-state, 2-input machine, such
>that we want the state/input pair (S1,I1) to lead to S1, and (S1,I2) to
>lead to S2.  Following the above means of construction, logical state
>S1 will correspond to the disjunctive physical state P1-or-P2.  The
>construction here will ensure that the combination (P1,I1) will lead to
>a state realizing S1, and that (P2,I2) will lead to a state realizing
>S2.  However, it ensures nothing about the behaviour upon the
>combinations (P1,I2) and (P2, I1) (which never come up in the actual
>sequence), and so cannot guarantee the appropriate transitions, i.e. 
>that (P1-or-P2,I1) leads to a state realizing S1, and that (P1-or-P2)
>leads to a state realizing S2.  So counterfactual sensitivity is still
>lacking.

Once I actualize all state transitions in the machine's table, your
"counterfactual sensitivity" will be accounted for.  Again, I wish you had
addressed my modal objections instead of jumping to conclusions.  Ever
since Carnap and Kripke, far too much bad philosophy has been done under
the guise of modal logic, by people who have no clue of the extent of its
formal, much less metaphysical, problematics.  Haecceitism is a genuine
issue, and you can't avoid it by silence; likewise, you can't escape the
elementary mathematics of the problem by all the vigorous handwaving in the
world.  If you truly believe yourself to be in possession of a workable
notion of implementation, please share it with your peers in a way that
would allow them to address its flaws.  For the third time, I ask that you
formally publish your answer to Putnam's argument, or cease claiming that
it has no force against functionalism.  To put it politely, either shit, or
get off the pot.

>-- 
>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."


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