HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: York U. Student Information Systems Project
	<OZ.92Nov3171704@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> <7889@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 22:11:33 GMT

Jeff Dalton writes:

   Minsky's posting was on the table lookup machine.  My point was
   (roughly) that people didn't respond to McCullough and Minksy
   on TLMs the way the responded to Putnam on rocks.

I do not think your "point" is worth further discussion.

   >   		...  Another factor, which I think is significant,
   >   though not sufficient, is that it was important to some people
   >   that Putnam be wrong and not so important that you (and Minsky)
   >   be wrong.
   >
   >Here is a list of people who have posted something on the subject "A
   >rock implements every FSA", in case it helps you to be somewhat more
   >specific than the usual "some people" generalizations.

   I take it that you'd prefer if I named names.

No, take it that I would rather prefer that you discontinue your
ridiculous generalizations.
						...  But why should
   I make it more of a personal dispute than it already is?

Why stop when you are having fun? You started this, trying to
show that some contributors to these newsgroups are "in the grips
of some ideology". Either go all the way, or back off.

   Anyway, since you obviously have access to all the postings, why 
   don't you tell us how many of these people agreed with Putnam?  

   Now, how many posted disagreements with Daryl's claims about the 
   complexity of, and mappings involving, the data in the TLM?

   Also, I'd still be interested on how many attacked the TT in
   the "TT is a scientific criterion" thread (or any other recent
   TT thread).

No, thank you. I have nothing to prove. If you do, feel free to
fetch the archives from nexus.yorku.ca and read through them. For
my part, I will ignore anything else you post on this topic.

cheers.		oz
---
cin, cout, cerr? croc.	| electric: oz@sis.yorku.ca
	       - anon	| ph:[416] 736 2100 x 33976
From: solan@smauguio.no (Svein Olav G. Nyberg)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Transcendental argument
Date: 10 Nov 92 13:15:33 GMT
Reply-To: solan@smauguio.no (Svein Olav G. Nyberg)
Organization: University of Oslo, Norway


In answer to D. Spurret

You argue that since X, then Y, on the grounds that if
not Y, then not X. This is called a transcendental
argument. Thanks. I did not know it had such a fancy
name, I must admit.

But by you,

X is "Judicial system of Middle Ages"

Y is "Free Will"


X is based on the belief in Y. But cannot the _belief_ in Y
be, without X necessarily being true?

I think you have failed to distinguish between the correctness
of the mentioned legal system and the belief in it. Thus your
error.


Solan
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Algorithmic Thought? (was re: QM and Free Will)
From: alanb@sdl.mdcbbs.com (Alan Braggins)
Date: 10 Nov 92 10:23:26 GMT
 3.17065@husc3.harvard.edu><1992Nov3.224312.24030@athena.cs.uga.edu>
Organization: Shape Data (Division of EDS), Cambridge UK
In-reply-to: fuller@athena.cs.uga.edu's message of Tue, 3 Nov 1992 22:43:12 GMT

>>>>> On Tue, 3 Nov 1992 22:43:12 GMT, fuller@athena.cs.uga.edu (James P. H. Fuller) said:

> The claim that we do higher math (or anything) by means of some knowable
> or unknowable controlling algorithm will be subject to the standard refu-
> tation:
I assume "standard" means "usual", not "of recognised quality" here?

>     If all behavior is rule-governed then in order to guide behavior A
> a corresponding rule A must be applied.  But *applying the rule* is a be-
> havior also, and in turn must have a rule to govern it -- i.e. a rule B
> to explain how to apply rule A.  And there must in turn be a rule C to con-
> trol the application of rule B.  Instant infinite regress.  On the other
> hand, if we "just know" how to apply rule A and don't need a second rule
> B to determine how to do this, then we've identified a behavior that doesn't 
> need a rule to govern it and acknowledged that not all behavior is rule-
> governed.

>     Conclusion: at some point we must simply act, without any rule overt
> or covert to control our action.  Though a given action may be describable
> by a rule inferred by an observer, that alone is not enough to show that
> a rule somewhere inside the actor is necessarily controlling the action.
> Whatever the correct analysis is of the regularities we see in behavior,
> the notion of rules or guiding algorithms as a universal answer is just
> too naive.

There are two obvious problems with this argument.
i) It ignores the possibility of self-referential rules, which would avoid
the infinite regress.
ii) Even if there is a level where we must simply act, (and obviously
there is - physics is describable by rules, but if you jump of a cliff,
you do not need a rule to tell you to apply gravity and fall), this does
nothing to rule out a controlling algorithm being used for higher maths.
Every step in this argument is equally applicable to computers.
--
     Alan Braggins, alanb@sdl.mdcbbs.com, abraggins@cix.compulink.co.uk
Shape Data - A division of EDS-Scicon Limited.   Cambridge, UK +44-223-316673
   "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
 "My employer does not necessarily share my views - but I'm working on it."
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
From: delval@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Alvaro del Val)
Subject: partial order semantics for conditional logic
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 21:08:45 GMT

I have often seen the claim that Pollock's conditional logic system SS
can be semantically characterized in terms of a partial order
associated to each world, but never seen a published proof. Could
anybody give me references to where can I find such proof?

Thanks,

Alvaro del Val

Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams)
Subject: Re: Popper and Abian and other matters
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 00:42:37 GMT
Organization: Security APL, Inc.

In article <94684@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>In article <1992Oct23.160505.2580@oracorp.com>, daryl@oracorp (Daryl McCullough) writes:
>>                                      And I think his criticism is
>>valid; it isn't clear what slogans such as "survival of the fittest"
>>can be other than tautologies.
>
>If you're silly enough to define fitness as survival, sure.

I think fitness really pretty much is defined as survival, as Daryl has
argued in other postings.  (At least, survival of your genes.)

I think the real content of "survival of the fittest" is that "fittest" is a
naturalistic concept.  While it is *defined* in terms of survival, it
depends only on natural law.  No supernatural agencies are required.  Among
a group of modern scientists and engineers, that is a relatively
uncontroversial position, so the slogan sounds a bit quaint in this context.

The main content of evolutionary theory is that *random* mutation is the
only input to this process.  So another sense of "survival of the fittest"
is a negative one: survival of the fittest is the only thing driving
evolution.  This would not be true, for example, of Lamarckian evolution.
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.physics,sci.skeptic
From: grante@aquarius.rosemount.com (Grant Edwards)
Subject: Re: Measurement & Precision
Reply-To: grante@aquarius.rosemount.com (Grant Edwards)
Organization: Rosemount, Inc.
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 19:02:29 GMT

dabbott@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU (Derek Abbott) writes:

: PS. BTW, it would be an interesting to put 5 or 6
: scientists/engineers on a desert island (rich in ores) with the goal
: of producing a 5um accuracy stepper motor from stratch. They are
: allowed any text books they like and we feed them well, so they can
: work on it full time.
: 
: It would be interesting to see if they could do it within their life time.

Of course they couldn't.  It takes a large and prosperous society to
support the hundreds of specialized skills necessary for the task you
describe.  In order to accomplish what you ask you would need
thousands of well fed people including miners, mining engineers,
metalurgists, carpenters, smelters, machinists, electrical and
mechanical engineers and technicians, potters, glass blowers,
chemists, smiths, etc, etc, and (god forbid) probably some managers.
You would also need a wide range of raw materials in addition to
metalic ores.

P.S.  Unless you are talking about a linear stepper motor (which I
have never heard of) it is meaningless to specify the accuracy of a
stepper motor in anything other than angular units.

P.P.S. How about we put Derek on a desert island with the goal of
producing something that makes sense.  It would be interesting to see
if he could do it within his lifetime.

--
Grant Edwards                                 |Yow!  MMM-MM!!  So THIS is
Rosemount Inc.                                |BIO-NEBULATION!
                                              |
grante@aquarius.rosemount.com                 |
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 10 Nov 92 18:00:17 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <1992Nov5.041758.16880@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough) writes:
>In article <Bx3t8w.D75@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>,
>chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>
>>While it is true that there are many functional descriptions of a
>>system, that does not mean that such descriptions are not objective.
>>Whether a system instantiates a given functional organization is an
>>objective matter, it seems to me (modulo Putnam/rock worries -- let's
>>not get into those again).
>
>The problem for me is that I don't know of an objective, coherent,
>nontrivial notion of functional organization. To be nontrivial, it has
>to be the case that two systems that are behaviorally identical can
>have different functional organizations.

But in another article you say:

   "behavior" is not a sequence of actions, it is a causal
   relationship between inputs and outputs. The [source] code 
   [of a program] is the specification of this causal relationship.

Now, it sounds from this like functional organization and
"behavior" are almost the same thing.  A specification of
a functional organization would also specify the behavior.

-- jd
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.lang,sci.cognitive
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 00:22:18 -0500 
From: "John R. Beer" <jbct+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Theories of meaning not relying solely on symbolic representation
	<1992Nov9.202812.11520@midway.uchicago.edu>

In <1992Nov9.202812.11520@midway.uchicago.edu> Jacob Galley
	writes:

>Now I think my original question was not specific enough. What bothers
>me about the theories of meaning that I have seen is that they do not
>adequately account for how meaningful symbols are linked to WHAT >THEY
>MEAN. Ie, while we have made a good amount of progress in syntax and
>taxonomic classifications, which describe how meaningful signs
>interact with and relate to each other, I have not encountered any
>theories of how the signifier is linked to the signified.

You should look at:
Donald Davidson's writing on truth theory and radical interpretation,
collected in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation(1983)

Michael Dummett--start with Truth  and Other Enigmas, which will
prepare you for his classic paper "What is a Theory of Meaning?", in
Truth and Meaning ,  (McDowell and Evans,eds.)

The Varieties of Reference by Gareth Evans, which sets out an account
of what abilities one needs in order to make reference to objects in the world.

This stuff is hard going, but immensely rewarding.  Although all three
authors are firmly in the analytic tradition (and you might want to look
at Frege and Quine before plunging in), they aren't proposing new
formalisms, but possible ways for grounding these formalisms.

							--John Beer
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams)
Subject: Re: Hypotheses (was: Re: Assumptions vs.
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 20:44:57 GMT
Organization: Security APL, Inc.

In article <10292316.69870.6891@kcbbs.gen.nz> Hakki_Kocabas@kcbbs.gen.nz (Hakki Kocabas) writes:
>> I am talking about a different phenomenon.  What I am saying is that,
>> assuming that the speaker and hearer have reached the same interpretation of
>> the original statement, when that interpretation is later falsified, they do
>  
>in other words they have acknowledge that they understood each other..  
>  
>> not thereafter always discard the statement entirely.  Instead, they change 
>> the level of precision at which the statement is interpreted.  Neither need 
>  
>would they still talk about 'interpretation' ?  

Is that a critical point?  They might.  I would, in that situation.

>> have considered this alternative interpretation at the time the statement  
>> was made, but they will fall back to approximately the same interpretation. 
>>   
>> I think this occurs with at least two kinds of statements: hyphotheses and  
>> observations.  Not only scientific hypotheses have this kind of property; th
>  
>you mean reports of observation according to the frame-work of the theory..  
>  
>> hypotheses of a detective investigating a crime will behave the same way.  
>>   
>> For observations, the fall back occurs because observations are known to be 
>> imprecise.  A person can easily think he saw something slightly different  
>                                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  
>> from what he actually saw.  A small discrepancy is generally assumed to be  
>  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  
>  
>intelligence rejects such a sentence:  
>> he saw something slightly different from what he actually saw.   
>     ^^^                                                    ^^^  
>it should read:  
>He saw something slightly different from what he expected to see, according  
>to the theory...  

You are mis-parsing the sentence (which I admit is subject to
misinterpretation).  Your restatement is completely wrong, however.  A
better one is:
What person thinks he saw can easily be slightly different from what he
actually saw.
No theory is involved here; just a perceptual error.

>Because; "observing" is
>Roughly this: putting oneself into the most favourable situation to   
>receive certain impressions with the purpose, for instance,   
>of describing them. [LWPP 7e]  

Ah, now I understand.  You misunderstood my use of the word "observation". I
was using it in the sense of a statement reporting a perception.  I did not
mean to suggest scientific observation.  Please try again.


Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams)
Subject: Re: Popper and Abian and other matters
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 22:32:52 GMT
Organization: Security APL, Inc.

In article <96932@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>In article <1992Nov10.004237.50028@Cookie.secapl.com>, frank@Cookie (Frank Adams) writes:
>>>>                                      And I think his criticism is
>>>>valid; it isn't clear what slogans such as "survival of the fittest"
>>>>can be other than tautologies.
>
>>>If you're silly enough to define fitness as survival, sure.
>
>>I think fitness really pretty much is defined as survival, as Daryl has
>>argued in other postings.  (At least, survival of your genes.)
>
>But it's never defined as survival_of_the_species, which is what the
>"survival" in SOTF is referring to.

I will agree that given fitness as survival of your genes, and survival of
the species as the intended meaning of survival in SOTF, SOTF is not a
tautology.  On the other hand, it doesn't a whole lot of interesting
content.

>>I think the real content of "survival of the fittest" is that
>>"fittest" is a naturalistic concept.
>
>Part of it is.  I made that point several times in my postings.

You seemed to be saying that "fittest" has a naturalistic *definition* -- in
terms of things like cardiovascular efficiency, etc.  I don't think it does.
It's just that the theory of evolution claims (among other things) that, in
fact, these are only kinds of things contributing to fitness.
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.physics,sci.skeptic
From: dabbott@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU (Derek Abbott)
Subject: Re: Measurement & Precision
Organization: Electrical and Electronic Eng., University of Adelaide
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 12:13:29 GMT

In article <1dck8fINNgie@agate.berkeley.edu> lizi@soda.berkeley.edu (Cosma Shalizi) writes:
>In article <1992Nov2.043143.24298@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU> dabbott@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU (Derek Abbott) writes:
>>Imagine you are a stone age philosopher. All you have are your big chunky
>>stone tools to work with to engineer with for everyday life.
>>You produce a persuasive argument that it is impossible to ever produce
>>tools, machines and measurements that are accurate to within micrometers
>>(or fractions of a camel's hair).
>>It is obvious to you that your coarse implements can't measure to any greater
>>accuracy than they are already and so engineering to greater precision
>>is philosophically impossible, by simple inductive reasoning.
>>Where is the flaw in his argument?
>   1. Induction is not valid. This has been known for some time. There are
>      many inductive arguments which are rational - the fact that all observed
>      crows have been black _is_ reason to believe that all crows are black -
>      but not valid, the way, "All men are mortal, and Socrates is a man,
>      therefore Socrates is mortal" is valid.
>   2. This is not a philosophical argument but an engineering one. "With our
>      current technology, it is impossible to make things finer than a
>      camel's hair, and we can think of no ways of improving things to get
>      around this limitation." This is a very sound argument. With stone age
>      techniques and science, there is no way to make tools or measurements
>      of the desired accuracy.

Exactly. If you are a stone age man with a measuring stick that is marked
off in certain intervals that are done as "accurately as can be," then it
is very difficult for you to see how to make them any more accurate
(as you would have done it in the first place).

The coarseness of your implements appear to be the absolute limit. The vision
to overcome this limit by use of a leveraging type principle (say) is not
forthcoming.

It is this limitation in mental vision that is interesting, not so much that
it was an engineering example.

>>I'm wondering to what extent we are tricking ourselves with words
>>(like the stone age man example did) today when we grapple with such
>>philosophical mysteries as quantum mechanics, mind-body problem,
>>determinism v. free will etc.

There maybe a concept lacking in our vision that that has yet to be found.



PS. BTW, it would be an interesting to put 5 or 6 scientists/engineers on
a desert island (rich in ores) with the goal of producing a 5um accuracy stepper
motor from stratch. They are allowed any text books they like and we feed them
well, so they can work on it full time.

It would be interesting to see if they could do it within their life time.

Do people think it would necessarily take a number of generations?

Also recording the minimum number of steps it took to "bootstrap" modern
precision out of stone age tools would be a fascinating bit of trivia.
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Induction v. Karl Popper
Date: 10 Nov 92 14:36:43 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <27526@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>In article <1992Oct29.133849.10933@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough) writes:
>
>>Popper's suggestion is that we not judge a theory based on its origin,
>>but instead judge a theory by its ability to make accurate predictions.
>
>Not quite, but by its failure to make inaccurate predictions.
>According to Popper a theory accumulates _no_ extra virtue by making
>more verified predictions. The value of the confirming experiment is a
>human weakness in scientists, and not logical -- according to Popper.

Take that Turing Testers!
From: spurrett@superbowl.und.ac.za (David Spurrett)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: DETERMINISM 2: `Refutation' the second
Date: 5 Nov 92 10:49:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: superbow.spurrett.24.720960561
Organization: University Of Natal (Durban)
NNTP-Posting-Host: pc13.superbowl.und.ac.za

DETERMINISM 2: `Refutation' number two.

o-----------------------------------------------------------------------o
|   This posting is part of a series of monomaniac diatribes.  Please   |
| email if you want to follow anything up.                              |
o-----------------------------------------------------------------------o
  
  I explicitly do not want to get all technical here, and certainly do  not
want to get involved in any of the truly vexed questions of the interpreta-
tion of Quantum Mechanics (QM).  The following argument is, however, fairly
simple, and to my knowledge  not especially contentious.  In  particular it
does not rely upon any assumptions about (non-)locality.  Here it is:
    
    Atomic-type  things,  for  example  Neutrons,  have things called `half
  lives' which are periods of time  over which half of any given  collecion
  of the type of thing in  question will `decay', or change into  something
  else.
    
    The QM description of things involves treating every Neutron  (sticking
  with our current example) as identical.  Indeed it involves treating them
  as `the same' to the extent, in effect, of regarding there as being  only
  _one_ (busy as a one legged man at an ass kickin' contest) Neutron in ex-
  istence.    To  repeat:  we  have  no  theoretical  reason  to regard two
  `different' Neutrons as different.  _BUT_ of any two, over the  half-life
  period, only _ONE_ will decay.
    
    From situations between which we have no reason to distinguish, we  get
  clearly _different_ outcomes.   Hence the  falsity of determinism,  which
  holds that the way the past was/present is necessitates a unique (and al-
  ready specifed/specifiable) future.
  
  Any thoughts?
  
o------------------------------------------o------------------------------o
| David Spurrett, department of Philosophy |  `I have seen the truth, and |
| University of Natal, Durban              |   it makes no sense.'        |
| email: spurrett@superbowl.und.ac.za      |              - OFFICIAL!     |
o------------------------------------------o------------------------------o
From: davis@passy.ilog.fr (Harley Davis)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: The "validity" of feminist philosophy
Date: 13 Nov 92 10:50:03 GMT
	<1992Nov10.165822.2107@guinness.idbsu.edu>
Organization: ILOG S.A., Gentilly, France
In-reply-to: holmes@garnet.idbsu.edu's message of 10 Nov 92 16:58:22 GMT


In article <1992Nov10.165822.2107@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@garnet.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:

   Except in extreme cases.  Feminist epistemology is absurd, unless one
   believes in "woman's intuition".  The ways in which people know things
   do not depend on their gender in any _philosophically_ relevant way.

It's not so obvious.  For example, studies indicate that women have
more a more sensitive sense of smell than men.  If human pheromones
indicate emotion, and women are more sensitive to these pheromones
than men, than women could have more direct sensory access to the
emotions of those around them.  I can imagine lots of ways in which
such an ability would be philosophically relevant.

-- Harley Davis
--

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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net: davis@ilog.fr			2 Avenue Gallie'ni, BP 85
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