Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.logic
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!gatech!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!utnut!utgpu!pindor
From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Lucas & Penrose's use of Godel
Message-ID: <DBo5Kp.3DJ@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <3tjrr2$4ft@cnn.Princeton.EDU> <3u0vmm$6ns@aurora.cs.athabascau.ca> <DBMB1v.MBF@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> <3u2hha$p8h@aurora.cs.athabascau.ca>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 19:17:13 GMT
Lines: 63
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai.philosophy:30086 sci.logic:12318

In article <3u2hha$p8h@aurora.cs.athabascau.ca>,
Burt Voorhees <burt@cs.athabascau.ca> wrote:
>>In article <3u0vmm$6ns@aurora.cs.athabascau.ca>,
>>Burt Voorhees <burt@cs.athabascau.ca> wrote:
>>.........
>>>In particular, strong AI + Godel implies
>>>fundamental limits to human reason, and
>>>would seem to say that there are things which
>>>are in principle _unknowable_.  This is a
>>>rejection of the ancient idea that reason
>
>>A lot of ancient ideas turned out to be wrong, for instance that Earth is
>>flat, or the Earth is in the center of the Universe.
>>Now, I am not sure what you mean by _unknowable_. If you mean something
>>which we can know nothing about, does it make sense to say that something we
>>cannot even in principle know about exists? Wittgenstein says no and I agree.
>
>That is, of course, one possible response.  We can never
>know about it so it doesn't exist.  That was, in fact,
>an argument given by Gorgias the Sophist who published
>a paper in support of three claims:
>     1.  Nothing exists
>     2.  Even if something did exist, nobody could know it
>     3.  Even if somebody could know it, they could not
>     communicate it.
>Of course, if those things which we can't know turn out to be
>able to causally affect us then we are in trouble.
>
Isn't this a contradiction? If certain things are able to causally affect us,
then we can know about them.

>>>is adaquate as a source of reliable knowledge
>
>>This is certainly an incorrect idea, we definitely also need observations.
>>Armchair philosophy just won't do it.
>
>This is not "arm chair philosophy."  Before you go around making snide
>comments about philosophy perhaps you should become familiar with some.

I have seen enough to keep away from the most of it.

>The basis of science was the idea that the world is a cosmos; i.e.,
>a rationally ordered unified structure, and that the human mind
>could comprehend this order through reason (that includes experiment,
>observation, etc.)  This assumption would seem to fail if we accept
>both strong AI and the Godel results.  (There are ways out, but they
>are also a bit strange in their implications.)  This, it seems to me,

The idea that cosmos is "a rationally ordered unified structure and that 
the human mind could comprehend this order through reason (that includes 
experiment, observation, etc.) is akin to assuming that we are a pinacle of 
the cosmos.
Unbelievable arrogance.

>is the thought behind Penrose's otherwise only "cute" tale at the
>beginning and end of Shadows of Mind.
>
Andrzej
-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Instructional and Research Computing  what they think and not what they see.
pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca                           Huang Po
