From: zeleny@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Date: 17 Apr 92 18:20:36 GMT
 <1992Apr7.183603.10809@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Apr14.064644.16892@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.

In article <1992Apr14.064644.16892@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes: 

>In article <1992Apr7.183603.10809@husc3.harvard.edu>
>zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes: 

MZ:
>>Regardless of the dubious relevance of Parfit's position on personal
>>identity to the issue of reducing functionalism to behaviorism, it should
>>be clear to you that the lack of rigid personal identity, as determined by
>>functional organisation, ipso facto denies you the opportunity to
>>estabilish truth-conditions for the strong conditionals in question.

DC:
>Of course one has to distinguish the identity-conditions for the
>minds from those of the physical basis of the implementation
>(c.f. the copper/statue distinction, here mirrored by both the
>object/system and object/mind distinction).  But in any case I am
>certainly not denying the existence of trans-world identity, simply
>denying that there is always a fact of the matter about it.  I take 
>Kripke's position, more or less, that one doesn't need to establish
>identities across qualitatively specified worlds to establish the
>truth of these conditionals; rather, the identity is given in the
>antecedent specification of the worlds.  Again, there's no more
>difficulty with these conditionals than with the conditional about
>the lamp.

A couple of comments.  Pro primo, if, in your capacity as a functionalist,
you succeed in distinguishing the identity-conditions for the minds from
those of the physical basis of the implementation (or, for that matter, if
you succeed in giving a materialist basis for the copper/statue distinction
-- see Peter van Inwagen's "Material Beings", or any discussion of
Chisholm's modal formulation of "the ship of Theseus"), I'll eat my beard.
Pro secundo, I would like to see some textual support for your bizarre
interpretation of Kripke, preferably from his technical writings on modal
logic.  Once again, slowly: the familiar Kripke possible-worlds structures
are paradigmatically haecceitist, insofar as they presuppose trans-world
identity conditions for the individuals in their domains.  Now, haecceitism
ina and of itself doesn't generate any problems for your position: witness
the situastion with the lamp.  It's only when you try to simultaneously
stipulate trans-world identity conditions for mind-brains, and for their
contingent properties, that you run into a logical problem.  For
haecceitism with respect to the individual properties is tantamount to
rejecting the intelligibility of stipulating identity conditions for
individuals independently of their satisfaction of the said properties;
conversely, haecceitism with respect to the individuals is tantamount to
rejecting the intelligibility of identifying their contingent properties
(e.g. functional states) across possible worlds.  You pays your money and
you makes your choice.  Why is it that this simple technical point should
be so difficult to get across?

MZ:
>>I am not sure just what you are saying here; if you are implying that
>>"mere" nomological supervenience in conjunction with a full ontological
>>commitment to the ranges of the existentially quantified variables of the
>>formal expressions of the supervenience laws in question can be
>>meaningfully distinguished from metaphysical supervenience, then, on the
>>face of it, you are making a ridiculous claim.  I don't see just how your
>>dualism could help you out of this predicament, other than by reducing your
>>supervenience theses to mere parallelism.

DC:
>Nomic supervenience is trivially distinct from metaphysical
>supervenience, because nomic necessity is different from metaphysical
>necessity.  A universe physically identical to ours but lacking
>conscious experience is a conceptual and a metaphysical possibility,
>but not a nomic possibility, on my view.  So consciousness nomically
>supervenes on the physical, but does not conceptually or metaphysically
>supervene.

I would like to hear more about your notion of nomic possibility.  In
particular, what enables you to rule out the possibility admitted by
Kripke, that physical necessity is the same as metaphysical necessity?

DC:
>I'm a dualist for more or less the same reason as Kripke, i.e.
>because of the possibility of the experienceless replica universe.
>Of course most materialist functionalists will respond to Kripke's
>argument by denying this possibility (or else by denying the
>reality of consciousness, as Dennett does, so we're already
>in the experienceless universe).

So far, so good; but if I were you, I wouldn't rest until I discovered
exactly what it is that would enable your supervenience theses to escape
the fate of the identity thesis.  Of course, it may well be that you've
succeeded in so doing; however you certainly haven't communicated it to me.


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: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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