Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!jqb
From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and consciousness
Message-ID: <jqbD0D76r.417@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <19941129.084940.318@almaden.ibm.com> <D03I45.FoB@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> <jqbD03qq2.7Kz@netcom.com> <D0786H.Bpp@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 1994 01:08:50 GMT
Lines: 68

In article <D0786H.Bpp@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <jqbD03qq2.7Kz@netcom.com> jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter) writes:
>>Actually, the original question was whether, without "scientific" criteria,
>>categorization is necessarily subjective.  If "scientific" is intended to
>>mean "objective", then it seems tautological.  Jeff Dalton then asked whether
>>we couldn't just say that some subjective opinions were right and others were
>>wrong.  
>
>I did?  Where?

That's what I thought you were saying here:

	In article <Czu6C4.30z@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
	Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
	>pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
	>><econrpae@vax.oxford.ac.uk> wrote:
	>>>Was the property of being made out of gold a subjective property
	>>>until chemists formulated scientific tests of goldhood?
	>>>
	>>Yes. This is exactly the point. When chemists formulated scientific tests of
	>>goldhood, they at the same time changed the content of the term. Before 
	>>"gold" was something which had such and such properties and other substances,
	>>as long as they showed these properties, were "gold" too. 
	>
	>That's one way of seeing it.  But why can't we also see it like this:
	>
	>(a) People thought the other substances were gold (or perhaps we cay
	>    they called them "gold"), but those substances turned out not to
	>    be gold after all.
	>
	>I'd find it odd if we *couldn't* legitimately say (a).  Suppose
	>people counted "fool's gold" as gold in the past.  Surely it's
	>possible to meaningfully say they were wrong.

>I almost always find your version of what I said to be a distortion.
>I assume that's not your intention, but could you possibly cut me
>a little slack from time to time?  I might just mean something
>more reasonable than you first think.

Actually, since the question I attributed to you above at least makes sense to
me, I think I was cutting you slack.  But lately you seem to be saying that
"gold" in "to be gold" and "as gold" above are both "the stuff we call gold",
but that is nonsensical because no "people [in the past] counted fool's gold
as" the stuff that we call gold now (namely, stuff with the atomic number 79).
Their word "gold" didn't *mean* the same thing as our word "gold" now.  You
seem to have agreed to this several times.  Therefore I can no longer find any
coherent meaning to your sentences above.  So any restatement of mine will
necessarily seem like a distortion of what you said, since my interpretation
of the meaning of the words and your interpretation of the words differ (which
is sort of the theme of this whole discussion, yes?).  So perhaps you can
restate what you mean *clearly*, being careful to say, for each instance of
"gold", precisely which meaning you have in mind: our modern definition of
"atomic number 79", your Platonic definition "stuff like this" (which I find
imprecise and nonsensical, but at least I will know which confusion you are
working with), some definition such as "yellowish metal", or "valuable
yellowish metal" (although this "definition" cheats because in order to
determine whether the yellowish metal is valuable we first have to determine
whether it is "gold" by the *assayists'* definition), or *something* that
makes it clearer what you mean, since multiple meanings of the same string of
characters g-o-l-d is the basis for much of the confusion here.

The bottom line is, I believe the reason you find your statements distorted is
that they are imprecise and reflect conceptual confusions.  I do the best I
can to make sense out of them.

-- 
<J Q B>
