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Article 4874 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Message-ID: <1992Apr1.161324.13959@oracorp.com>
Date: 1 Apr 92 16:13:24 GMT
Organization: ORA Corporation
Lines: 45

zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>Bravo, Daryl!  I applaud your integrity: instead of giving up on your
>assumptions, you push on to ostensibly counterintuitive consequences.

Functionalism is not *my* assumption. I am essentially a small-b
behaviorist. However, I am perfectly willing to explore the
consequences of a set of assumptions into counterintuitive territory.
As a matter of fact, I believe that any theory without
counterintuitive consequences is likely to be worthless, an
after-the-fact rationalization of the theorists prejudices.

>Let us see where this gets us.  The essential inconsistency that
>remains in your approach has to do with your retaining the notion of
>an external cause.  Consider that a true materialist has no recourse
>to drawing any boundaries separating the knowing subject from the
>objects of his knowledge.

I disagree. The boundaries can be drawn whereever it is convenient.
That is the conclusion I came to long ago, that declaring this pattern
of matter to be "me" and that pattern to be "you" is a step in the
modeling of the world, and is not fundamental in the world. The
boundaries could have been drawn another way, which would have made
for a different, but equally valid model of the world.

We shift boundaries all the time in less extreme ways. For various
purposes, I might consider my hand to be a part of me. At other times,
I consider to be an external object that happens to be under my
control. I believe that where one draws the boundary for personal
identity is fairly arbitrary, and depends on the purpose one has in
mind.

>What appears to be an external cause to one observer will, with a
>bit of judicious gerrymandering, appear like a bona fide internal
>state to another. On the other hand, even the rock is capable of
>accepting inputs, e.g. from natural clocks, like the Sun. So what's
>the big deal about being human?

As I said, I am basically a small-b behaviorist, so I think that what
is special about human beings is their ability to participate in
interesting dialogs.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY


