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Article 1573 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Daniel Dennett
Message-ID: <15188@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 25 Nov 91 05:51:52 GMT
References: <1991Nov19.210047.5646@husc3.harvard.edu> <15112@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1991Nov22.115929.5757@husc3.harvard.edu>
Organization: Edinburgh University
Lines: 105

In article <1991Nov22.115929.5757@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>In article <15112@castle.ed.ac.uk> 
>cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:

CM:
>>So, the intellectually dishonest Dennett and his ilk turns out not
>>really to be well exemplified by Dennett so much as those in general
>>collected in Boden's anthology, who turn out to be best exemplified by
>>McCulloch and Pitts -- whose paper is arguably the oldest AI paper in
>>existence. Well, I suppose we should be thankful for that -- you can't
>>really go any further back than McCulloch and Pitts!

MZ:
>Dennett will do just fine as a whipping boy; feel free to address my
>article expressly dedicated to his foibles, fallacies, and frauds.
>However, at this time, let's occupy ourselves with more capable targets.

I don't think your Dennett critique made it this far on the net, but
since you've promised to review the "Consciousness" book, I'm happy to
wait for that.

>CM:
>>On the way I have also managed to collect some idea of what you think
>>is wrong with the ideas of these foolish AI supporters: it has
>>something to do with an implicit assumption that Man is finite, based
>>on some presumed relationship between Man and a Turing Machine. 

>Not quite.  Turing machines have infinite "memory", i.e. tape; finite state
>automata, like neural nets, most certainly don't.  See McCulloch and Pitts
>on the infamous page 37: "every net, if furnished with a tape [...] can
>compute only such numbers as can a Turing machine, [...and] each of the
>latter numbers can be computed by such a net".  Pray tell, where does the
>tape come from?

If your argument is based on the lack of an infinite tape in any
practical realisation of a so-called Turing-equivalent machine, then you
do need to tell us where, in _your_ model of the human mind, the
infinite tape comes from -- or whatever it is that in your view provides
the human mind with its supramechanical virtue.

[CM: ... ad feminam ...

MZ:
>It's a stupid PC joke: recall that in Latin, `ad hominem' comprehends both
>genders.

Exactly. That's what makes it a joke. Ha ha!]

MZ:
>>>The implications of Searle's argument are painfully obvious: semantical
>>>knowledge must be represented in, and accessible by, the mind of any
>>>intelligent being.  Pray tell, where are these issues adequately addressed?

CM:
>>I don't think anybody is yet capable of addressing them. They are
>>generally recognised as serious issues in the AI community (which is
>>precisely _why_ the Chinese Room gets anthologised and debated so
>>much), and some people are working on them, despite being handicapped
>>by intellectual dishonesty :-) As it happens, there is still plenty we
>>can do before the lack of resolution of this issue becomes an obstacle
>>to further progress, so we (AI researchers) don't actually have to sit
>>around twiddling our thumbs until someone manages to address them
>>properly.

>Sorry, Chris, but you are mistaken on two counts.  First of all, Dennett
>does indeed claim that he has refuted Searle; see his latest book,
>pp.435--40

There are plenty of weighty people who claim to have refuted Searle,
starting with the originals in the BBS, not to mention hundreds of
net-philosophers :-) However, just as Searle can "prove" the
impossibility of squeezing semantics from syntax without necessarily
having to _explain_ how people manage the semantic trick, so it is
possible to "refute" Searle without necessarily having to explain how a
machine can mean: it is possible to demonstrate error without knowing
the truth.

>Secondly, there is no shortage of good semantical theories of
>fragments of natural languages.

They all beg crucial questions by depending on what are still magical
qualities of the human mind.

>As I have argued earlier, no adequate
>semantical theory is compatible with reductive materialism, on the natural
>assumption that the brain is a finite state automaton.  Prove me wrong.

1. There is as yet no adequate semantical theory, and I don't think
anybody yet has a good idea what one will look like.

2. Strong reductionism doesn't hold water, let alone protoplasm. How
about weak reductionism?

3. I don't think it follows from the materialist view that the brain is
an FSA, but I think what you mean is that a materialist brain can't
avoid being finite in its capacity, since it is finite in mass and
therefore representational capacity. This seems quite irrelevant,
however, since I am sure that nobody doubts the finite span of my life,
and the inferior capacity of my brain and mind compared to Einstein's,
yet nobody supposes that these severe limitations on my mental capacity
forbid my equal participation in the semantic world.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205


