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Article 4978 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke)
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Message-ID: <1992Apr6.121330.21448@cs.ucf.edu>
Sender: news@cs.ucf.edu (News system)
Organization: University of Central Florida
References: <1992Apr2.202206.25306@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 12:13:30 GMT

In article <1992Apr2.202206.25306@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>  
chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
| In article <1992Apr2.132116.26024@cs.ucf.edu> clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas  
Clarke) writes:
| 
| Thus with proper of identification of  
| >{single state} X {physical states} the single-state machine implements the  
| >5-colour-map-checker, computationally as well as behaviorally.
| 
| No it doesn't, for the usual reasons.  (I hate to say "strong conditionals"
| again.)
| 
I still don't get your conter argument.  Referring to the more general  
machine/rock with I/O case, the condition that the rock produce identical I/O  
behavior to the machine seems to me to estbalish sufficient boundary/initial  
conditions to insure that the rock reproduces the machine in all respects.  In  
this respect it seems Putnam's argument is correct.

If you are saying that that there exist sufficiently complex I/O behaviors  
(e.g. intelligent behaviors) so that the state identification Putnam uses must  
be undecidable/uncomputable/chaotic (or something equally nasty), and hence  
practially worthless, then I intutively agree, and intellectually maintain that  
the matter is an open question.




