Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uunet!psinntp!scylla!daryl
From: daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and consciousness
Message-ID: <1994Dec2.145157.8870@oracorp.com>
Organization: Odyssey Research Associates, Inc.
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 14:51:57 GMT
Lines: 23

pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:

> What in your opinion gives meaning to statements, which cannot be
> verified?

This is an important question, but I don't see what the phrase "which
cannot be verified" has to do with it. What *does* give meaning to
statements? Rather than answer in all general, I would say at least
that if a statement has meaningful consequences, then it is itself
meaningful. So for example, a universal statement, such as "It rains
every day in Seattle" is meaningful, because even though it is not
verifiable (it would take an infinite amount of time to check such a
statement), it has verifiable consequences---for example, that it will
rain tomorrow. A perhaps more practical example is "Don't eat such and
such a kind of mushroom---they are all poisonous". Such a statement is
not verifiable---the best you can verify is that every instance of
that kind of mushroom that have been tried so far has been poisonous.
However, it is certainly meaningful, and it could save your life to
believe it.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY
