Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and consciousness
Message-ID: <jqbD0Czvp.788@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <3bdqsd$7r6@news1.shell> <3bedah$7qf@mp.cs.niu.edu> <jqbD02nnr.C1n@netcom.com> <D076uu.B5s@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 1994 22:31:01 GMT
Lines: 163

In article <D076uu.B5s@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <jqbD02nnr.C1n@netcom.com> jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter) writes:
>
>Re: fool's gold, gold, etc.
>
>>The real problem is that we have people here, notably j.d., who refuse to
>>define terms and at the same time treat those terms as if their definitions
>>were universal.  This applies to "conciousness", "idea", "intelligence", and
>>"gold". 
>
>I don't offer definitions, because there's no point in doing so in
>such a hostile newsgroup.

What hostility there is might be a response to such patently intellectually
dishonest absurdities as this.  If this group is too hostile for you, then go
away.  If it is not, then you can't use supposed hostility as a reason not
to offer definitions when called upon, while continuing other forms of
conversation.  You need a better reason than this.

>But if you think defintions are important,
>why don't you offer some?

When there is a disagreement that seems to be based upon differing meanings
of terms, I try to make my meaning clear.  I don't come up with silly excuses
for refusing to do so, and then continue what then must be an obfuscated
discussion.

>I don't treat my meanings as universal, BTW.  This is a distortion
>you've decided to introduce.

If you refuse to define words like "idea", yet continue to ask whether two
ideas are different, then there is the implication that we all share an
understanding of the word.  That implicitly treats *your* (unstated) meaning
as universal.

>> (no historical accuracy claimed here)
[...]

>Sure, if that's how it actually went.  But that's not the only
>plausible story that can be told.  If you can show it's the only
>right story, please do.

Jeff, I will once again ask you to work on your reading comprehension.

>>  Eventually, with the discovery of chemistry, the
>>definition becomes "element with atomic number 79"; anything else, regardless
>>of how much like that stuff it is, and regardless of whether it was once
>>called "gold", is no longer called "gold"; that is, it isn't gold, *given the
>>modern definition of "gold"*.
>
>How can you say "regardless of how much like that stuff it is"?

Um, gee, it wasn't hard to do.  I just hit the appropriate keys.  "anything
else" here means "anything without an atomic number of 79"; "That stuff"
here is "stuff with atomic number 79".  I'm not saying what "like"
means here; it is irrelevant ("regardless").  I.e., anything without atomic
number of 79, even if it is the same color, is also metallic, has the same
malleability, or specific gravity, or any other characteristic of gold, is *not*
gold, *by the modern chemical definition*.  It's not clear to me what your
problem with my statement is, other than perhaps reading comprehension.

>If it's the same stuff, then it's gold.

If by "the same stuff" you mean "stuff with atomic weight of 79".
If by "same stuff" you mean some sort of "in my pocket" Platonism, then I
find the statement incomprehensible.

>But if it's not, if it's
>some different stuff, then I agree with you: it isn't gold as now
>defined.

If by "different stuff" you mean precisely "not having atomic number 79".
Otherwise I cannot imagine just what you do mean.

And "as now defined" isn't relevant to whether people were right or not to
call this stuff "gold" in the past, because those people never made any claim
as to what was or was not "gold as now defined".  When people in the past said
"gold", they weren't talking about gold.  They were talking about
gold-as-defined-in-the past.  But then, I already said that.

>Now, you seem to think that meaning is necessarily in terms of
>explicit properties such as "shiny malleable solid with a certain
>weight and gold color (commonly found in the ground)".  But that's
>a disputed issue (consider Putnam, Kripke, et al).

I have no idea why it seems that way to you.  If people were pointing at stuff
and saying "there's gold", and that established the meaning of "gold" by usage,
then it is even more absurd to claim they were wrong.

>>  When one asks whether people are wrong to call
>>pyrite "gold", it depends upon whether you mean "gold-present-definition" or
>>"gold-past-definition".  
>
>I agree.
>
>>People calling pyrite gold now are calling it
>>"gold-present-definition".  People calling pyrite gold in the past were
>>calling it "gold-past-definition".
>
>Still agree.
>
>>  Thus it is obvious (that is, it should be
>>obvious; and no, I'm not going to try to explain why many people cannot grasp
>>the obvious) that the people of the past could be correct while the people of
>>the present could be incorrect.
>
>Which I do not dispute.  It *could* be that the history of the word
>"gold" is such that they were correct in the past to call pyrite
>god.  But to say whether they *were* correct, we have to consider
>the actual history of the word and deal with some controversial
>philosophical issues.

The problem is that you asked whether it couldn't be the case that people were
simply wrong about whether or not some things were gold, when the original
question was whether the question of goldness was subjective prior to
scientific tests.  Pyrite wasn't an issue until it became an example of what
might not be gold now but what might have been gold then (hypothetically,
ignoring historical accuracy).  By failing to distinguish what sort of gold
you meant, you swept all the philosophical issues under the rug.  Of course
people could be wrong as to whether some things were gold, by any definition;
someone could point to a diamond and call it "gold".  But the question is
whether, in the absence of objective tests, there is a fact of the matter as
to what is or is not gold, where "gold" is as defined by common usage, not by
some objective definition as used today.

>You have an alarming tendency to suppose that anyone who disagrees
>with certain philosophical views must be an idiot.

No, it's the quality of the arguments that I judge, not the final conclusion
alone.  Of course, some conclusions, such as that exactly 47 angels can dance
on the head of a pin, or that God must exist (minus a tautological definition
of God), or certain bizarre conclusions about human mentation (minus a model of
human mentation), imply flawed arguments.  No doubt, though, both brilliant
(e.g., Penrose) and not so brilliant (e.g., Searle) people can present flawed
arguments.

Also, I don't quite understand what sort of thinking would suggest that one
could define "gold" as "like these coins over here" and then make any sort of
claim as to whether people were or were not correct about whether various
things (other than those particular coins) were in fact gold, but it does seem
to be one that doesn't use the same inference rules and concepts of logic as I
do; I find this nearly as incomprehensible as conversations with Jehovah's
Witnesses.  I don't think that JW's are idiots, but I certainly do have some
sort of negative judgement of them.

>BTW, for is/ought (another philosophical issue still in dispute), I
>happened run across an interesting book the other day.  _The Moral
>problem_, by Michael Smith, just published.  He, among other things,
>claims to show how to derive an ought from an is.  But I take him
>just as an example.  You might also consider Putnam on fact/value
>in Reason, Truth, and History.

I can no more conceive of a valid logical argument that it is right for me to do
one thing rather than another than I can conceive of a valid logical argument
that bananas do or do not conceptualize boisterously.  But perhaps you can
guide me a bit.

Of course, my problem was not that you had one or another view about is/ought
("certain [idiotic] philosophical views"), but rather that you treated
"reasonably" and "ethically" as synonomous (rhetorical idiocy, if you will).
-- 
<J Q B>
