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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Penrose and human mathematical capabilities
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Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 17:19:09 GMT
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In article <3trkhp$1kq@netnews.upenn.edu>,
Matthew P Wiener <weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu> wrote:
>The word you're looking for, by the way, is "epistemological".

s/ont/epistem/g.  That's what comes of my posting after 36 hrs without sleep.
The rest stands.  Including the obvious fact that you don't know what you are
talking about, since the notions of "belief" and "justification" have not been
formalized, and thus are not subject to formal arguments, Goedelian or
otherwise.  My C compiler knows how to compile C programs, without indulging
in formal proofs concerning said C programs.  We can debate whether this is a
correct usage of "know", but it will be a tempest in a teapot, having no
effect on the matter of fact as to whether human cognition is TM-computable,
since there is no matter of fact as to whether something is believed or
justified.

>Congratulations.  What, for a robot, is a "justified belief".

That's the question, isn't it?  It's the same thing it is for a human, a
matter of linguistic interpretation about its behavior and its internal
states.  That this question gets asked indicates the sorts of underlying
anthropomorphic assumptions.
-- 
<J Q B>

