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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and consciousness
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Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 19:16:05 GMT
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In article <jqbD02nnr.C1n@netcom.com> jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter) writes:

Re: fool's gold, gold, etc.

>The real problem is that we have people here, notably j.d., who refuse to
>define terms and at the same time treat those terms as if their definitions
>were universal.  This applies to "conciousness", "idea", "intelligence", and
>"gold". 

I don't offer definitions, because there's no point in doing so in
such a hostile newsgroup.  But if you think defintions are important,
why don't you offer some?

I don't treat my meanings as universal, BTW.  This is a distortion
you've decided to introduce.

> If (no historical accuracy claimed here) at one time the definition
>of "gold" was something like "shiny solid with gold color commonly found in
>the ground", then both pyrite and au were gold. 

I agree.

> Once people dig this stuff up
>and start playing with it, they discover that sometimes it is malleable and
>sometimes it is flaky; this and other characteristics allow categorization
>into two different substances, and the more desirable one gets the label
>"gold", with the new definition "shiny malleable solid with a certain weight
>and gold color (commonly found in the ground)", and the less desirable one is
>called "fool's gold".

Sure, if that's how it actually went.  But that's not the only
plausible story that can be told.  If you can show it's the only
right story, please do.

>  Eventually, with the discovery of chemistry, the
>definition becomes "element with atomic number 79"; anything else, regardless
>of how much like that stuff it is, and regardless of whether it was once
>called "gold", is no longer called "gold"; that is, it isn't gold, *given the
>modern definition of "gold"*.

How can you say "regardless of how much like that stuff it is"?
If it's the same stuff, then it's gold.  But if it's not, if it's
some different stuff, then I agree with you: it isn't gold as now
defined.

Now, you seem to think that meaning is necessarily in terms of
explicit properties such as "shiny malleable solid with a certain
weight and gold color (commonly found in the ground)".  But that's
a disputed issue (consider Putnam, Kripke, et al).

>  When one asks whether people are wrong to call
>pyrite "gold", it depends upon whether you mean "gold-present-definition" or
>"gold-past-definition".  

I agree.

>People calling pyrite gold now are calling it
>"gold-present-definition".  People calling pyrite gold in the past were
>calling it "gold-past-definition".

Still agree.

>  Thus it is obvious (that is, it should be
>obvious; and no, I'm not going to try to explain why many people cannot grasp
>the obvious) that the people of the past could be correct while the people of
>the present could be incorrect.

Which I do not dispute.  It *could* be that the history of the word
"gold" is such that they were correct in the past to call pyrite
god.  But to say whether they *were* correct, we have to consider
the actual history of the word and deal with some controversial
philosophical issues.

You have an alarming tendency to suppose that anyone who disagrees
with certain philosophical views must be an idiot.

BTW, for is/ought (another philosophical issue still in dispute), I
happened run across an interesting book the other day.  _The Moral
problem_, by Michael Smith, just published.  He, among other things,
claims to show how to derive an ought from an is.  But I take him
just as an example.  You might also consider Putnam on fact/value
in Reason, Truth, and History.

-- jeff



