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Article 1862 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Thermodynamic analogies
Message-ID: <10185@optima.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 4 Dec 91 19:47:41 GMT
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In article  <1226@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM> Eric Silber writes:
]...  Just as we can say that in spite of the
] fact that
] the laws of thermodynamics imply an inexorable global increase in entropy,
] locally, entropy may decrease in a biological entity at the expense of 
] extracting energy from the surroundings, we can also say , by analogy,
] that a brain-mind-thing , although it is a finite, circumscribed machine,
] attains/exhibits certain properties ,by virtue of its interaction with its
] infinite surroundings,  which (properties)
] could not be inferred/deduced/computed by
] by it as an isolated system....

Until you can spell out the mechanism by which an infinite input can
serve in place of an infinite capacity _and_ prove that the input is
actually infinite, this analogy will not be convincing.

I'll note that the theory of computation strongly supports the notion
that an infinite input _cannot_ substitute for an infinite capacity (a
finite automaton with infinite input cannot recognize a larger class
of languages), and that due to the finite sensory capacity and finite
lifetime of a human, it seems unlikely that humans have an infinite
input (even if the universe is infinite).
--
					David Gudeman
gudeman@cs.arizona.edu
noao!arizona!gudeman


