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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: When is a simulation of an X an X?
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Date: Sun, 29 Jan 1995 19:51:08 GMT
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In article <D34G26.MoC@metronet.com> rtxserv@metronet.com (Bill Wallace) writes:
>helen ruth etters (etters@wfu.edu) wrote:
>: On Wed, 25 Jan 1995, Bill Wallace wrote:
>
>: > I have sampled the the thread called "When is a simulation of a Y a Y?"
>: > with a great deal of interest. I responded to it but it seems to have
>: > been lost or ignored.
>: > 
>: > My answer to the question is: when the observer has NO independent
>: > method of determining which is which. Virtual reality of the distant
>: > future?

>: I suggest that the thread in question does not lead so easily out of the 
>: labyrinth. A fake Rembrandt is a simulation of a Rembrandt, but even if 
>: an observer had no independent method of determining its inauthentic 
>: status, it still is not a Rembrandt.

>For you to say that "it still is not a Rembrandt" requires some means for
>you to tell the difference.

No, it doesn't.  Perhaps saying "I can tell it's not a Rembrandt"
requires some way to tell the difference.

Being a Rembrandt is not a physical property of the object, it
concerns the object's origin (roughly: was it painted by Rembrandt?).
Even if there are necessarily some physical differences between any
two paintings, we still may not be able to determine which one was
painted by Rembrandt, because we may have lost track some time in the
past.  But if the fake was not painted by Rembrandt, it remains
the case that it was not regardless of whether we can tell that it
does not.

-- jd
