HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: snodgras@cyber.net (John E. Snodgrass)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: nano-replicator assumptions
Date: 11 Oct 92 04:17:10 GMT
Organization: The Cyberspace Station

In article <1992Oct06.011603.121346@Cookie.secapl.com> frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:
>In article <3027@news.cerf.net> snodgras@cyber.net (John E. Snodgrass) writes:
>> Without the purpose of attempting to survive, organisms
>>would not evolve. (But one cannot logically assert this purpose
>>also evolved.)
>
>The depth of misunderstanding in this statement boggles the mind.  The
>ESSENSE of the Darwinian theory of evolution is that no "purpose" of
>attempting to survive is required for evolution.  Mutating, self-replicating
>entities evolve, purpose or no.  You might as well assert that things fall
>because they have a purpose of being at a lower level.
>

      As you put it, it may sound absurd, but it may in some sense be true.
In a systems approach, in fact, it _would_ be true that there is a reason,
hence a purpose behind, the falling object. On some scale of process, motion
in a particular direction results from the adjustment of systems which are
acting to preserve stability. In terms of the 'framework analysis' of modern
physics, which is itself a PHILOSOPHY (whether or not you choose to 
recognize it as such) the falling of an object is "explained" by some 
equation which merely _describes_ it. In order to provide any qualitative
explanation, it is necessary to refer in some way to systems with purpose.
Notions of purpose, whether implicit or explicit, are in fact how we
understand and analyse events around us. "Why" something happened is not
explained by "because it happened before". "Why" do termites build nests
is not explained by "because termites often built nests before".

      As for your remarks about the theory of evolution, my intent was not
to regurgitate what someone else said about evolution, including Darwin.
My intent was to argue that purpose IS behind the operation of systems, and
that by recognizing this purpose we move toward understanding these systems
better. This is not unscientific. You can say that 'the purpose of survival
is not necessary for evolution', but that is an empty suggestion. You know
that organisms do have the purpose to survive, because you are an organism,
and that is your purpose! If this is not true, then I fail to understand
what you mean by purpose!


      When we look at organisms, in terms of structure or behavior, we
do analyse them in terms of purpose. Why does such and such a finch have
a tougher beak than this other finch on another island? Because, in order
to surive it had to crack this other, harder type of nut (or something).
Now, you can suggest that no purpose (i.e. to get food) is involved in
this analysis, and therefore an assessment of the better beak for this
purpose is somehow projecting ideas onto what is happening, but that is
fake objectivity. Internally you f*think purpose, while externally you
say 'mechanism'. This posturing itself _serves no purpose_.

      John E. Snodgrass [snodgras@cyber.net]
From: vincent@reg.triumf.ca (pete)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Idealism (was Dualism)
Date: 16 Oct 1992 17:46 PDT
Organization: dept. of theophysics and cosmogyny
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: reg.triumf.ca
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <1992Oct13.192715.60894@Cookie.secapl.com>, frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes...
>In article <7667@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>In article <1992Sep16.225422.128824@Cookie.secapl.com> 
>>frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:
>>
>>>I see plenty of room here for solipsism, but none for idealism.  If I don't
>>>accept that my sensations are the result of the physical world, I don't see
>>>how to get anywhere.
>>
>>Maybe there's no matter, only ideas, `a la Berkeley.
> 
>But *whose* ideas?  If they are just your ideas, you're back at solispism.
>If you want to assert that *other* people also have ideas, you have to
>justify your belief in the existence of other people.  And the only evidence
>we have for that belief is from our sensory impressions -- impressions we
>must interpret as being of the world *before* we can interpret some of them
>as being from "other" people.

  In Berkeley's original conception, the ideas ultimately belonged to god,
with some portion of them being shared by him/her/it with each individual.

Whether the idealism you consider is yourself, god, and ideas, or yourself,
other individuals, god, and ideas, or even yourself, other individuals,
a neutral bookkeeper and ideas, the criticism still applies that it's
not clear how to get anywhere. The illusion of a physical world and its
laws must exist under the licence of the idea generating - or 'realizing' -
mechanism, whose true parameters must be apprehensible only by some form
of introspection (if at all). 

   But still, it's the only viewpoint that neatly solves the problem
of the emergence of consciousness, by positing that consciousness is
the antecedent.


==========================================================================
..And in the dream I saw Dan Quayle   :    Pete Vincent
sitting before the Great Lookup Table  :
eating baked space potatoes, and lo!   :  Disclaimer: all I know I learned
he was wearing Heavy Boots.            :  from reading Usenet.

Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 22:33:11 GMT

In article <7694@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

>On the other hand, I didn't have in mind only "sophisticated"
>defenders of AI.  Why should I?  My point was about the net, 
>or rather (I suppose) about those who post to certain newsgroups.

There are any number of people out there whose views aren't very
well thought-out.  Personally, I prefer to pay attention to those
who at least put forward halfway decent arguments for their views.
Also, ignoring someone who doesn't take the trouble to format an
article correctly is a good way to cut down the crowd.  (It's
quite interesting how the ragged, unformatted postings tend to
be the least thoughtful.)  Of course, if you insist on arguing
with everybody in the universe, then this won't appeal, but if
one is interested in getting at truth, then paying attention to
the arguments with substance makes more sense.

>But the views I'm complaining about are in fact widespread.
>Why just the other day I read someone comparing your views to
>vitalism and arguing against vitalism (and by implication you)
>on the verificationist grounds that there were no consequences. 
>And even someone like Steven Harnad, who thinks the Chinese Room
>works against the TT, and who must surely count as sophisticated,
>will argue in favor of the TT as follows (from Comp.ai.philosophy
>and SIGART):
>
>  So if the pen-pal TT is enough to allow us to correctly infer that a
>  real person has a mind, then it must by the same token be enough to
>  allow us to make the same inference about a computer,

Certainly there are some verificationists out there.  I think you're
misreading Harnad, however, who is far from a verificationist; he's
here making only an obvious point about justification (if X is *enough*
to conclude Y, then X should cause one to conclude Y in other cases.
Of course, maybe you don't think the TT alone is *enough*, and that
one is also using e.g. knowledge of internals in the human case).

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."
From: frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams)
Subject: Re: The Cosmological Bad Dream
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 18:30:56 GMT
Organization: Security APL, Inc.

In article <1992Oct10.183025.43740@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>In article <1992Oct09.173634.150896@Cookie.secapl.com>, frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:
>> Assertions vary in the degree of certainty which the speaker has in the
>> assertion as well as in the precision of interpretation.  
>
>We don't disagree here.
>
>It is not unusual
>> for an assertion to occupy more than one point on this spectrum.
>
>Do you have any evidence for this?  Does it seem a wholly novel idea
>that we might want to have support from speaker behavior for what we
>assert about language?

I have given examples where I believe exactly this is happening, and Ken has
rejected them out of hand.  I'm not in the business of doing research into
"speaker behavior", so there is really nothing else I can offer.


>> Another example: if your boss tells you that there will be a meeting
>> tomorrow with every employee in the company present, you will believe
>> strongly that there will be a meeting; much less strongly that *every*
>> employee will be there.  This is understood by both you and your boss.
>
>Yes.  Or if I say, "Everybody's coming to the party tonight" my hearer
>knows I do not mean all the people in the world.  The context and the
>belief-worlds of speaker and hearer determine an interpretation.

But there *are* two simultaneous interpretations in my example.  Your boss
really *does* intend that every employee will be there; but he also intends
to hold the meeting, even if not everybody makes it.  Your counter-example
loses this aspect by presenting a clearly counter-factual surface claim.

>This is empirically supported: we ask "What did he mean when he said S?"
>and we certainly expect an intelligible response.  Notice that when a
>hearer is uncertain as to interpretation, he will pursue it: "What did
>you mean?"  "Do you mean exactly three men?" etc.  If your notion of
>simultaneous precision values were correct, I do not see how you would
>account for this behavior.

Uncertainty about the intended meaning is quite independent of the
possibility of multiple meanings.  A reasonable answer to "Do you mean
exactly three men?" would be "Three would be best, but one or two more would
be acceptable.".  This I would interpret as resolving the uncertainty into
explicit multiple meanings.
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 14 Oct 92 19:11:10 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <Bv9A31.GMx@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <1992Sep26.010553.19020@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>
>>>But are thoughts _just_ dispositions to behave.  I think not.
>>
>>I agree with you here.  Incidentally, I'm not sure Dennett would
>>disagree with this either.  He says quite explicitly (in "Consciousness
>>Explained") that qualia are just complex dispositions to react in
>>certain ways in certain circumstances, but he treats qualia
>>differently from intentional mental states.
>
>Well, no-one has held the simple view "mental states are just
>dispositions to behave" since Gilbert Ryle, and even in Ryle's
>case it's not clear that his position was so simple 

Ok, but the reason I asked whether thoughts were just dispositions
was that some people were offering arguments for the view that
beliefs were just dispositions.  They evidently thought this was
a plausible view of belief.  But the same arguments (eg, what
would you say when asked the right question?) would work just
as well for thoughts.  So if they don't think the same about
thoughts, this should get them have similar doubts when it
comes to belief.

-- jd
From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: "Consciousness Explained"
Date: 9 Oct 92 16:31:26 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <7650@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

>Perhaps you saw the tv show about Dennett.  Was it Panorama?
>BBC?  ITV?  Maybe I'd better look it up...  

>Anway, I found that more or less infuriating.  For instance, Dennett
>told us a bit about Descartes, consciousness and the pituitary gland,
>etc, and then tried to make it sound like virtually all philosophers
>held that view!  We call this a straw man where I come from.

>Then, again and again, there was a huge gap between some amazing
>example or experiment and the conclusion Dennett seemed to want
>us to draw from it.

I'm a Dennett fan and made a point of recording it. I was so disgusted
after watching it that I erased it. It was a comic-book travesty and I
can't understand why Dennett allowed it to appear. In his book he is
gravely aware of the problems he faces in putting forward such
counter-intuitive views to his readers, whose very language has so
strongly infected them with Cartesian dualism, and he spends a lot of
time trimming the undergrowth of misconceptions and assumptions.
Despite the size of the book it is a sustained and well-articulated
argument towards his conclusion, with very little spare flesh on it.
But in the TV show the journey between observation and conclusion was
so brutally truncated that only those already familiar with the
territory stood any chance of understanding what he meant.

I guess maybe the TV crew kidnapped Dennett and tortured him until he
agreed to do the show :-)
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 12 Oct 92 19:27:31 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <1992Sep16.225422.128824@Cookie.secapl.com> frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:

>I see plenty of room here for solipsism, but none for idealism.  If I don't
>accept that my sensations are the result of the physical world, I don't see
>how to get anywhere.

Maybe there's no matter, only ideas, `a la Berkeley.
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 16 Oct 92 20:04:01 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <1992Oct15.172441.30236@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In article <7707@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

>>The situation we're in right now with the TT is that of people
>>defending the visual test for gold in the absence of sufficiently 
>>good reasons for concluding that it works.  

>>Of course, there are differences between gold and intelligence
>>(or whatever).  I don't mean for the analogy to be exact.  (For
>>instance, we don't know yet whether "fools consciousness" is
>>actually possible.)

>Exactly, and that makes all the difference.  The visual test of gold
>would still be accepted as adequate if fools gold were merely a theoretical
>possibility which was not know to actually exist.

But machines that pass the TT are merely a theoretical possibility!
That's the sort of thing we're discussing here!

What I'm saying is that although we might eventually know enough
to know the TT works, we don't know enough now.  This seems pretty
straightforward to me.

Now you say "the visual test of gold would still be accepted".
This looks to me like an argument for the TT -- that we should
"still accept" it.  I realize that it doesn't _have_ to be an
argument for the TT, but it's certainly an atempt to defend the
TT from an attack rather than, say, a suggestion on how to make
the attack more effective.

>Perhaps usenet article get distorted when they cross the atlantic.  But
>I really have not seen many arguments - good or bad - for the TT.  I do
>see people pointing out the errors in frequent attacks on TT. 

Often trivial errors.  Why don't they say "your argument is almost
right and you could fix it thus"?  Of, for less trivial errors, "right
conclusion, bad argument; here's a better one"?

>And I see you misinterpreting these articles as if they were arguing
>for the TT.

I see people having plenty of opportunities to agree with other people
and not taking them.  If they agree with the conclusions these people
reach, why isn't there more of the sort of thing I just mentioned
above?

You know, it might be pretty easy to find concrete evidence that I'm
wrong.  There was recently a series of articles about the TT in
Comp.ai.philosophy (referring, for instance, to some recent stuff in
SIGART).  Someone could look at them and see what sorts of things were
said.  I read only a few of them, so I don't know how this will turn
out; and, as I said to Alan Smaill, I'd be glad to find I'm wrong.

>I think there are very few people in this discussion who would not agree
>that the internal dialogue is important.  However some of us believe that
>the internal dialogue does affect behavior, and therefore is tested with
>behavioural tests. 

Like what?  You can look at my behavior and tell if I'm thinking
about the weather?  Thinking about anything at all?  How?  Why
aren't more people making money as mindreaders?

-- jd
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 12 Oct 92 20:43:13 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <1992Sep18.152300.9596@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough) writes:
>In article <sd1nyvn.kmc@netcom.com>, kmc@netcom.com (Kevin McCarty)
>writes:
>
>>>Not that this contradicts your point (you did say "most of us"), but I
>>>*do* think that the giant lookup table is conscious. Only most of its
>>>thinking is done at compile-time, rather than run-time.
>
>> conscious of what, when, I wonder.  Doesn't this do strange things to
>> any notion of consciousness as situated in psychological time?  More
>> than anything else, this puts me in mind of ghosts.
>
>Psychological time need not coincide with real time. When you dream,
>there is a psychological time that gives a subjective sense of the
>ordering and duration of events. However, as I understand it,
>objectively the entire dream can take place in the few moments before
>waking up. I don't think it is especially meaningful to ask at what
>objective time did such and such an event happen in your dream; as far
>as we know, the various parts of the dream could have formed in your
>brain simultaneously or in the wrong order in objective time.
>
>I don't see any problem with the assumption that a computer program
>(even one as simple as a lookup table) might have a subjective notion
>of the time at which various thoughts or sensations took place, which
>might be in complete contrast with the objective times for the
>corresponding thoughts.

Um, well, maybe my coffee cup is conscious, only most of its thinking
was done in the warehouse where no one could see it.  (You will remember
this coffee cup, I think.)

What you usually say about this is that in the case of the Table
Lookup Machine we have the evidence of its behavior, whereas the
coffee cup just sits there.  But the TLM behavior makes it look
like the thinking is happening as we talk to it, not at compile time.

That you are willing to allow that things can be so different from
what the behavior indicates is something I have to regard as a
tremendous victory for the anti-behavior side.

-- jd
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 8 Oct 92 20:03:53 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <Bup1Hs.Dxn@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:

>Some people, such as Dennett, take this as a reduction of the
>very notion of phenomenal consciousness -- if we can explain
>anything we say or believe about consciousness without postulating
>consciousness itself, then why not just say that consciousness
>is an non-existent illusion? 

It seems flase to me that we can explain >anything we say or believe
about consciousness without postulating >consciousness itself.  Why
do you think it is the case?

>In any case, one at least wants some kind of coherence between
>the two sides of the story that doesn't leave them completely
>alienated from each other -- if they were, then there would be no
>reason to suppose that the things we say about consciousness reflect
>anything about the contents of our consciousness.  To do this, one
>can at least require that the explanatory basis of consciousness in
>the physical coheres with the explanatory basis of our claims about
>consciousness.  Given that the explanatory basis of our claims about
>consciousness can be given in entirely functional terms,

Um, how do you know that?  I've yet to see such an explanation,
or even hear of one.

-- jd
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 12 Oct 92 21:19:24 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <1992Sep22.175911.1375@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:
>In article <BuypA4.K9p@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>[...]
>>So, in this case, I'm asserting the logical possibility of a zombie
>>replica of me, which certainly *seems* coherent.  The burden on
>>those who dispute this is to provide the slightest idea of
>>how it might entail a contradiction, or equivalently, how the
>>physical facts might entail the facts about consciousness.  This
>>is what they've manifestly failed to do.
>
>It entails a contradiction if the facts in the two cases are _the same
>facts_; you can only assume that it is _possible_ that they are
>different if they are in fact different. 

When you say it this way ("possible that they are different"), 
you seem to be talking about whether it is possible in the actual
world, meaning : it is possible that it is the case in the actual
world?  When we talk like this we usually mean something like
"given what we know, it it possible that...".  For instance,

   Is it possible that the man seen outside the shop and the
   man who killed the shopkeeper are the different?

Once we find out they're the same, we stop think it's possible
that they're different.  So possibility comes in as a sort of
epistemic possibility.

But the issue of logical possibility is quite different.  Even 
if in this (actual) world the man seen outside the shop and the
man who killed the shopkeeper are the same, there are other
logically possible worlds in which they are not the same.
For instance, the killer might go out the back and not be seen
while someone else walked out the front.  This is the sort of
possible we have in mind when we ask "Could Ford have beaten
Carter?" and not when we ask "Could Ford be someone other
than himself?"

-- jd