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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and consciousness
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References: <3b0176$hu8@mp.cs.niu.edu> <Czu6C4.30z@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <D000q2.8pn@spss.com> <3bdqsd$7r6@news1.shell>
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 1994 01:28:12 GMT
Lines: 57

In article <3bdqsd$7r6@news1.shell>, Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com> wrote:
>markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>>Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>Suppose people counted "fool's gold" as gold in the past.  Surely it's
>>>possible to meaningfully say they were wrong.
>
>>Surely it's not.  What does it mean to say that they were wrong?  That
>>they were mistaken in their beliefs, right?  But if they thought that
>>fool's gold was the same as what we would call gold (the element Au),
>>there is no belief of theirs which was incorrect; they were correct in
>>applying the term "gold" according to their definition to both substances;
>>and as they were not aware of our definition it cannot have entered into
>>any of their beliefs-- it wasn't in their heads to be wrong about.
>
>It seems like by this reasoning you can never meaningfully say that
>anyone is wrong about anything.  Am I wrong to think that fool's gold is
>gold today?  No!  Once the error of my ways is pointed out, I am merely
>using a different definition of "gold".  

I don't see how you can get anything like this from my posting.  One can
meaningfully say that someone is wrong when their beliefs are incorrect.
A medieval prospector would be incorrect in a belief that a pile of copper
was gold, because copper does not match *his* definition of gold.
Given the (dubious) assumption that there was then no operational 
difference between (what we call) gold and fool's gold, then his belief
that a lump of fool's gold was gold is not mistaken, because he does not
have a belief that the lump is element Au.  

I really don't see why this is so hard.  If you really want to say that
the prospector is wrong, *how is he wrong*?  He is not claiming that
fool's gold is made of element Au.  So what's his problem?

>Am I wrong to think that the
>earth is flat?  Not by my meaning of the word "earth" (the large, flat
>pancake-shaped object on which we live).

You're trying to sneak an existence claim into a definition.  (You and
Anselm.)  You can define "earth" as "large, flat, pancake-shaped object"
all you like-- and you'd be incorrect in your belief that the thing we
live on is an "earth" in that sense.  But adding in "...on which we live"
is simply confused; it has to be divided into two beliefs to make sense
(an "earth" is such and such a thing; and we live on one).

>Or would you say that people are wrong to think that the earth is flat
>today, but they were not wrong to think so 1000 years ago?  This whole
>idea of making wrongness relative seems inconsistent with our ordinary
>uses of the word.

No one is making wrongness relative.  I am only trying to expose the
incoherence of claims that outmoded beliefs are "wrong" when the
definitions of the terms used have changed.  

Suppose we decided tomorrow to divide "blue" into two terms, as Russian
does.  We will use "blue" for dark blue and "eulb" for sky blue.  Your
and Jeff's position seems to be that a present statement that the sky is 
blue is *wrong*, because the sky is in face eulb.  And I'm saying that
that's absurd.
