Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.logic,comp.ai.philosophy,sci.cognitive
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news4.ner.bbnplanet.net!news3.near.net!paperboy.wellfleet.com!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!utnut!utgpu!pindor
From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: FIRST order? was: why Ginsberg grouses
Message-ID: <DBo919.A8L@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <804460135snz@longley.demon.co.uk> <95Jul12.141104edt.6164@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <DBMC38.1I5@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> <95Jul13.063249edt.6167@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 20:31:56 GMT
Lines: 74
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:31485 sci.logic:12323 comp.ai.philosophy:30091 sci.cognitive:8289

In article <95Jul13.063249edt.6167@neat.cs.toronto.edu>,
Calvin Bruce Ostrum <cbo@cs.toronto.edu> wrote:
>In article <DBMC38.1I5@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>,
>   Andrzej Pindor <pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>
>| >No kidding.  However, making predictions is important.  I don't
>| >believe folk psychology is as bad at this as some people say.  An
>| >honest person's announcement that he seriously intends to do some
>|  ^^^^^^
>| >complex activity within his power is the kind of thing we rely upon
>| >all the time.
>| >
>| And who is "an honest person"? Perhaps someone who's "announcements that he 
>| seriously intends to do some complex activity in his power" can be relied
>| upon? One could hardly think of a better example of circularity of ascription
>| of intentions to people.
>
>Our entire lives are one big circular affair which we grow into and
>enlarge as we learn and age.  That something appears "circular" is not
>in itself an argument against it.  
>
Not in a casual conversation, but it is incompatible with this "something"
as an element of science.

>In any case, this is not a tight circle.  We learn about simple cases
                                              ^^^^^
>of honesty and intention when we are young (before those concepts make
>clear sense to us) and develop them into more sophisticated concepts
>as we go along.  
>
And how do we do learn these concepts? Not by any chance as terms for certain
behaviors? Or have you soaked the term "honesty" telepatheticaly?

>| Or perhaps "an honest person" is someone who's past behavior has shown that
>| his/her announcements are well correlated with a subsequent behavior?
>| Sounds very behavioristic to me.
>
>Well, this is clearly not what an honest person is, since a person can
>succeed in fooling people into believing he is honest by dishonest
>activity.  Some of us are better at detecting this than others.  One

This is silly. Please define then the word "honest".
And also note that two people with the same knowledge about the hypothetical
person may have contrary opinions if he/she is honest or not (hint: they may
have different standards of honesty).

>way we can do it is by detecting logical inconsistencies in what he
>says.  Of course, we then have to determine whether or not these
>inconsistencies were "honest" errors or not.  Knowledge of the
>kinds of mistake people make is then important.  This knowledge too
>is expressed in non-behavioristic terms.
>
This ties to having different standards of honesty. In other words the only
thing which is unambiguous is behavior, intensional terms are just attributions
created by the attributer.

............
>As far as your claim about my remark sounding behavioristic goes, of
>course we must use evidence in order to judge whether a person is
>honest.  But the use of evidence does not qualify a doctrine as
>behaviorism.
>
I am not sure what you mean by "doctrine". I am not committed to any
ideology (like behaviorism), but it seems to me that intensional terms, as
soon as you try to go beyond their function as categorising behaviors (or
complex behavioral correlations), become to ill-defined to be scientifically
useful.

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
