Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uknet!festival!edcogsci!jeff
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and consciousness
Message-ID: <D0IH2B.Cor@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: usenet@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (C News Software)
Nntp-Posting-Host: bute.aiai.ed.ac.uk
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
References: <D03qpH.7C9@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> <D077qE.BJx@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <jqbD0D3AC.HLp@netcom.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 1994 21:30:10 GMT
Lines: 146

In article <jqbD0D3AC.HLp@netcom.com> jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter) writes:
>In article <D077qE.BJx@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
>Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>If you stick to your position about "gold", then you must be referring to 
>>>some "ideal" of gold which has properties about we even now do not know.
>>
>>Not so.  I am referring to the stuff we call gold, which may well
>>have some properties we have not yet discovered.  Strange, isn't
>>it, that our definitions might not already tell us everything?  :->
>
>What is "the stuff we call gold", if not some ideal of gold?" 

Gold, of course!  :->

For discovering further properties, no ideal objects are needed, 
just some actual instances.

>Your notion of "the stuff we call gold" apparently makes sense to you,
>but it makes no sense to me, 

I don't much care whether it makes sense to you.

>and it apparently makes no sense to Andrzej, Mark, and many others.

We'll see.

>  Unless or until you can figure out how to communicate it
>in a way that does make sense to us, I don't see how this discussion can go
>anywhere.

It may well not go anywhere, since you're determined to resist any
effort on my part to communicate.  For instance, you keep saying
things like "if not some ideal of gold".  There may be many things
wrong with my position, but that's not one of them, as I keep telling
you.

If you don't like what I say, why not try, say, what Putnam says
about natural kinds?  Or maybe Kripke's _Naming and Necessity_.
I don't especially care whether my exact views are right, and
their views are (in places) along similar lines.

>>>BTW, which isotope of gold are you referring to?
>>
>>It was my assumption that the English word "gold" referred to all
>>of them.  If that's not the case, I'll be glad to stand corrected.
>
>The English word "gold" refers to anything with atomic weight 79.  That should
>be enough to answer the question.

Is this a test to see if I know what "atomic weight" means?

>>>>Nonehteless, Napoleon did either eat an egg or not for breakfast
>>>>that day (counting not hvaing breakfast on the didn't eat an egg
>>>>for breakfast side).  That's all I mean by saying there's a fact.
>>>>If Wittgenstein's an anti-realist about the past, then I'd say
>>>>he's wrong.
>>>>
>>>The point is that there is no way to know it, i.e. it does not make any 
>>>difference. 
>>
>>I picked that example as something we couldn't know (at least not
>>in practice, with in-principle perhaps still to be discussed), so
>>I'm not going to argue that there is a way to know.
>
>You are begging the question.  You have already asserted that Napoleon either
>did or did not eat an egg for breakfast.  On what grounds do you make the
>assertion?  

On the grounds that that's they way things are with eggs and breakfast.

>Perhaps neither you nor Wittgenstein are wrong.  Perhaps there are
>two (or more) models of the world, either of which account for our
>observations of it, one saying that there is a matter of fact and 
>one saying that there isn't.

Why does it matter what models say?  That seems as question-begging
as my saying N either ate an egg or didn't.

In any case, my aim here is not to prove that realism about the past
is correct.  It's an example of realism, and part of showing what
realism about mental properties is like.  I don't think there's
any hope of proving such views are correct, much less of convincing
you that they are.

>  This seems to have been the dispute between Bohr and Einstein on the
>balcony in re the moon.  Some would even argue that the realist model is not
>an accurate model of a quantum universe, in which Napoleon-ate-an-egg and
>Napoleon-ate-no-egg are in superposition until a distinguishing measurement
>is taken.

Sure, some might.  And if they do, we'll find that's what they
think, a useful result in itself, IMO.

>>>Discussing it makes as much sense as counting angels on a pin head.
>>
>>I certainly don't see the point in arguing about it.  Indeed,
>>who cares what Napoleon ate on most days?  But breakfast foods
>>are nice, ordinary, objects in the world.  Angels are a rather
>>different case.
>
>The point is that you made an assertion that you cannot verify.

No kidding.  But so what?  *I'm* not a verificationist.

>  The discussion
>(i.e., the assertion that thre is a matter of fact) seems pointless if no
>argument can be presented to support it.

Supporting arguments can be presented, but they won't convince
someone determined to resist.

>>The actual use often seems to be as a stick to beat people who don't
>>follow a sufficiently "scientific" (often verificationish) line, which
>>may make a number of things not always clear to everyone, I fear.
>
>You toss around these innuendoes and then complain about a hostile group.

When I get a reasable reply, I'll try to be reasonable in return.

>Interesting.  Poor Jeff just can't get his point across cuz that nasty
>William of Ockham was in the weaponry business, sort of how Hume was a hun
>per Ayn Rand, I suppose.

Interesting that you bring in Rand.  Now why is that?

I can't "get my point across" because (a) I'm not trying to convince
you or your like, and (b) you're not planning to listen to me anyway.
Label and dismiss is your game.  You want to stick me with Platonism
and ideal forms.

>Science is based upon verification.

So?

>>>Well, some poeple do it on idelogical grounds, but this is not science.
>>
>>That "not science" is inferior is also ideological.  
>
>That a methodology that allows convergence of opinion about matters of fact
>is superior to those that do not might seem like ideology to one who does not
>value such convergence, I suppose.

It depends on the aim.  Science is better for some things, but not
for others.


