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Article 4916 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Message-ID: <1992Apr4.015204.10671@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 4 Apr 92 06:52:01 GMT
References: <1992Apr2.202206.25306@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> 
 <1992Apr3.084449.10635@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Apr3.180407.28679@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
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In article <1992Apr3.180407.28679@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes: 

>In article <1992Apr3.084449.10635@husc3.harvard.edu>
>zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes: 

MZ:
>>I hate to say "haecceitism with respect to individuals excludes the same
>>with respect to their properties" again, but it looks like I must.  Perhaps
>>if your knowledge of modal logic went a bit beyond this parrot-like
>>invocation (and conflation) of various kinds of necessity, you might have
>>realized that Kripke's argument against mind-brain identity trivially lifts
>>to bear against the thesis of supervenience.  But, of course, it would
>>greatly inconvenience you to actually involve yourself in the substance of
>>technical issues, whose language you have used with great facility to
>>disguise the hollowness of your fallacious theses.

DC:
>For the last time, the degree of necessity required of the strong
>conditionals in the definition of implementation is physical
>necessity, pure and simple.  The criteria for implementation are
>truth-functionally dependent on a set of conditionals of the form
>"if in maximal state P, and maximal input I is received, then maximal
>state Q follows".  The states and inputs here are physically specified,
>and the truth-value of the conditional is determined by physical laws.

Again, the degree of necessity is the last, if not the least of your
problems (for, if functionalism is true, biological necessity is the same
as physical necessity); the first one has to do with giving an appropriate
semantics for your conditionals.  That your conflicting requirements simply
won't allow you to do: you can either stipulate trans-world identity
conditions for mind-brains, or for their properties, but not for both.
Choose the former, and you lose the conditionals; choose the latter, and
you lose personal identity.

DC:
>Kripke's argument certainly does not bear against supervenience, if
>this supervenience is construed, as I construe it, as nomic
>supervenience.  It bears only against the conceptual or metaphysical
>supervenience of qualia on the physical.

You seem to be assuming that nomological connection carries no metaphysical
import.  I suggest that you revise your ideas about ontological commitment;
Quine's "On What There Is" makes for an excellent antidote against your
metaphysical horror.

>-- 
>Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
>Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
>"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


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: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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