HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: palmer@cco.caltech.edu (David M. Palmer)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.physics,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Measurement & Precision
Date: 10 Nov 92 23:22:12 GMT
Article-I.D.: gap.1dpg74INNp4n
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
NNTP-Posting-Host: alumni.caltech.edu

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.

>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.

Piece of cake.  (Assuming you have the right kind of ores.)
Make a 5 micron/step 'inchworm' motor.  (An inchworm motor works
using the expansion and contraction of piezo-electric crystals
to make the system 'walk'.  They are used in probe positioning for
atomic resolution scanning-probe microscopes  (e.g. scanning tunnelling
microscopes.))

Wire you can beat out of native gold.  Batteries might be a problem,
but you could make a generator out of magnetite and wire.  Use quartz
for the piezo-electric components.  Polished stone for the rails.

Voila, within a year.  Less if the team includes a master blacksmith who
can do ab initio smelting of metals from ores.  A lot longer if you have
a management team.

All it takes is a little Conneticut Yankee ingenuity.

-- 
		David Palmer		 palmer@alumni.caltech.edu
Xref: sparky sci.philosophy.tech:4045 sci.philosophy.meta:2509 sci.classics:980
From: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.philosophy.meta,sci.classics
Subject: Re: Plato's Views on Women
Keywords: politics, women, feminism
Date: 11 Nov 92 14:09:29 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.
Originator: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com


In article <1992Nov11.010102.14565@cheshire.oxy.edu>, rooney@cheshire.oxy.edu (Michael Sean Rooney) writes:

|> 	Secondly, you seem to be implicitly claiming that a true
|> philosophy worthy of the name should be politically neutral, equally
|> acceptable to both followers of Rand and Marx.  This foolishness
|> merely betrays the ethically irresponsible legacy of Wittgenstein's
|> disconnection of transcendental philosophy from the world. [1]  
|> That feminism seeks some connections between thought and practice
|> is no vice.

"Ethically irresponsible legacy of Wittgenstein's disconnection of
trancendental philosophy from the world"?  Well, I guess that ices
the cake. I did not, by the way, claim that a true philosophy worthy
of the name (whatever that means) should be politically neutral.
I posed a question concerning how *uniform* the political philosophy
of so-called "feminist philosophy" is and how *central* a given
perspective seems to be.  The implicit question, of course, is
what comes first:  a committment to a particular philosophy for which
one then concocts a new discipline to serve as a vehicle of expression,
or the genuine identification of a new discipline and the discovery
that virtually all of its acolytes happen to cleave to a particular
political philosophy.

Thanks are due Ruth Ginzberg for the correct and full reference to
"APA (American Philosophical Association) NEWSLETTER ON FEMINISM
AND PHILOSOPHY".  This may be difficult for the average reader to
get ahold of, but I *do* recommend highly (and seriously) that
people interested in the concept of feminist philosophy look at
this.  It is almost (but not quite, I admit) as entertaining as
some of the papers given at recent MLA meetings.

|> [1] Not to give Ludwig too much credit: these ideas are inherited
|> from his hidden inspiration, Schopenhauer.

Oh goody!  Footnotes in a usenet posting!  Schopenhauers hidden
influence on Wittgenstein.  Intriguing.

-- 
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,talk.philosophy.misc
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: DETERMINISM 1: `Refutation' the first
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 18:24:50 GMT

In article <spurrett.31.721248874@superbowl.und.ac.za> spurrett@superbowl.und.ac.za (David Spurrett) writes:
>In article <1992Nov5.191446.15657@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>In article <spurrett.23.720960465@superbowl.und.ac.za> 
>spurrett@superbowl.und.ac.za (David Spurrett) writes:
>
>>>        For example when one  person pushes another over a cliff  we direct
>>>  our criticism/ revenge/ abuse/ rehabilitation/ whatever at the person who
>>>  `did' the pushing.  Some archaic legal systems had different economies of
>>>  `do-ers' and, for example, tried crows for crop damage.  NO LEGAL  SYSTEM
>>>  HAS EVER `TRIED' A LAW OF NATURE, OR A MECHANICAL DEVICE.
>>
>>This is simply not true.  Mechanical devices are sometimes subjected to
>>scientific and engineering tests, and the results of these tests are
>>brought to a court for decision.  The decision might, in effect, be a
>>judgment of summary execution (perhaps in the form of a product recall).
>>Certainly the treatment of mechanical devices is different, but this is
>>because mechanical devices are presumed not to have free will, and thus
>>unable to change their behavior.
> 
>  `Test' is not a `trail' in the legal sense concerning motivation, and 
>applicability of various moral evaluations.

I did agree that the treatment courts give to mechanical devices is different
from the treatment of people.  But still, your argument seems to amount to
the following:

	Since we think people are different from mechanical things, we
	will use the word "trial" for people and "test" for devices.

	Since we treat people differently from devices in the courts,
	using "trial" in one case, and "test" in the other, we can
	conclude that people are different from things.

This strikes me as circular reasoning.

About the best you can say about your argument is that you are using
the structure of the court system as an indirect indication of the
opinions and motivations of the politicians and lawyers who constructed
that system.  If you want to depend on opinion to "refute" determinism,
I hope you can do better than use indirect data, and I would hope you
could find more appropriate groups to poll.

Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,talk.philosophy.misc,talk.religion.misc
From: frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams)
Subject: Re: Algorithmic Thought? (was re: QM and Free Will)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 00:11:13 GMT
Organization: Security APL, Inc.

In article <1992Nov3.224312.24030@athena.cs.uga.edu> fuller@athena.cs.uga.edu (James P. H. Fuller) writes:
>    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.

This assumes that a rule is only something which can be followed.  It
assumes a false dichotomy between agent and rule.

Rules can be embodied in many forms.  In some of those forms, they act
directly.  A directly acting rule needs no actor separate from itself to
implement it; it is itself an actor.

When people talk about rules as a universal explanation of behavior, they
mean rules in this larger sense.
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: ORA Corporation
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1992 15:08:08 GMT

jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

>>There is evidence at compile-time of
>>thinking behavior. If you look at the code, you can see what the
>>responses to all possible inputs will be.
>
>That's not behavioral evidence (ie, not some behavior that's
>evidence), it's looking at the source code.  And, of course, one
>of my repeated points is that you can tell something by looking at
>the source code, which shows we're not confined to behavior.

As I said before, for me "behavior" is not a sequence of actions, it
is a causal relationship between inputs and outputs. The code is the
specification of this causal relationship.

>>What I was trying to suggest is that the notion of "having a thought
>>at a particular time" is not very meaningful. It is meaningful to talk
>>about the time that a physical event occurs, and it is meaningful to
>>talk about the subjective ordering of mental events, but it is not
>>especially meaningful to talk about the objective time at which a
>>mental event occurs.
>
>Why not?  Of course, an event may have some duration, and so it may
>not be right to assign it a single point in time.  On the other hand,
>it is entirely meaningful, and even true, to say that between typing
>this star -- * -- and this one -- * -- I was thinking about how bad the
>weather is in Edinburgh tonight.

There is certainly a relationship between the subjective ordering of
mental events and the objective time of physical events. However, I
don't think that the question "At what objective time did thought T
occur" necessarily has an answer.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY


Xref: sparky sci.philosophy.tech:3966 comp.ai.philosophy:6697 talk.philosophy.misc:2344 sci.lang:7925
From: nlc@media.mit.edu (Nick Cassimatis)
Newsgroups: news.announce.newsgroups,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.lang
Subject: Re: RFD: sci.philosophy.language
Keywords: RFD, philosophy of language, sci.philosophy.language
Date: 9 Nov 92 02:57:10 GMT
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory

In article <1992Nov8.192341.6220@samba.oit.unc.edu> Rick.Horowitz@launchpad.unc.edu (Rick Horowitz) writes:
>The following is an OFFICIAL request for discussion to create a
>newsgroup called sci.philosophy.language.  (At least in my mind) It
>supersedes a previous post I made requesting the creation of
>talk.philosophy.language.  It has been pointed out to me that a
>designation of sci might be more appropriate.
> 
>The proposal is to create a group with the following parameters:
> 
>Name of group:           sci.philosophy.language
>Mode:                    unmoderated
> 
...
>
>It is thought that the existence of such a group would stimulate more
>discussion in the area of philosophy of language than (sporadically)
>occurs in the other groups.  
> 
>I understand that the normal procedure calls for a discussion period
>of some 30 days, after which a voting period would be initiated.  So
>let's start the discussion.
> 
>Thanks.
> 

I'd like to see such a group also, but would also be interested in
including discussions on psychological and computational aspects of
language.  I realize that this all may be too much to have in one
group.  Perhaps there could be a group such as: comp.ai.language or
sci.cog.language etc.

Either way, it would be nice to see some more psychology and AI in the
philosophy of language.

Best of Luck,
-Nick
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams)
Subject: Re: Hypotheses (was: Re: Assumptions vs. assertions)
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 1992 23:44:12 GMT
Organization: Security APL, Inc.

In article <1992Nov1.082333.44291@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>In article <1992Oct26.215238.102458@Cookie.secapl.com>, frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:
>> It has since that discussion occurred to me that simultaneous interpretation
>> on multiple levels is not strictly necessary, and may in fact be false (that
>> is, very unusual) psychologically.  It suffices that when the truth of
>> statement is falsified at the accepted level of precision, there is a
>> fallback to a less precise interpretation; and that this fallback is
>> understood by both speaker and listener.  This, I hope you will agree, is
>> fairly common.
>
>We are in *partial* agreement here.  It is assumed in pragmatics that a
>hearer normally takes an utterance to be meaningful and tries
>various strategies in order to find an interpretation.  However, in
>contrast to your formulation, I would claim along with other
>pragmaticists that the *speaker* knows what level of precision he
>intends to convey at the time of utterance;

We are in complete agreement to this point.

> when you say "this
>fallback is understood by both speaker and hearer" I feel you are
>describing something special that happens or is supposed to happen
>in scientific discourse, specifically, when a scientific hypothesis is
>stated.

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
not thereafter always discard the statement entirely.  Instead, they change
the level of precision at which the statement is interpreted.  Neither need
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; the
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
such an error.

My earlier suggestion that people actually make statements with multiple
intended levels of interpretation comes, I think, from this phenomenon.  A
sophisticated speaker and listener with respect to these kinds of statements
will realize that this kind of fallback will (conditionally) occur, and
actually be aware of both levels at the time of the utterance.  This is
especially common with scientific hypotheses, since any trained scientist
has dealt with a large number of hypotheses.
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,talk.philosophy.misc,talk.religion.misc
From: frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams)
Subject: Re: Assumptions vs. assertions (was: Re the Cosmological Bad Dream)
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 1992 23:19:23 GMT
Organization: Security APL, Inc.

In article <1992Nov1.082333.44291@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>In article <1992Oct26.215238.102458@Cookie.secapl.com>, frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:
>
>[most of earlier discussion with up to four embeddings deleted for
>convenience]
>
>Miner:
>>>>>The field I know best is Linguistics.  In this field, we make the
>>>>>following assumption:
>>>>>
>>>>>	(a) All of the languages ever spoken have had the same properties
>>>>>            as languages we have examined.
>
>[...]
>
>Miner:
>>>My examples of
>>>scientific assumptions have to be in statement form, because I have
>>>to talk about truth.  That is, I need to be able to be clear about
>>>what the propositional content of the assumption is.
>
>[...]
>
>Adams:
>> I wonder if your (a) is really most accurately presented in statement form.
>> There are, after all, some good reasons for thinking it *isn't* actually
>> true; and, as you note, even those who state it may not really believe.
>> I would like to seriously suggest that an imperative formulation of (a)
>> might more accurately represent it.  For example,
>> 
>>   (a') Don't assume that languages we can study from the past have different
>>        properties from those of languages we have examined.
>> 
>> It seems to me that a speaker who does *not* actually believe in (a) but
>> says it anyhow must really have an interpretation like (a') in mind.
>[...]
>Secondly, isn't it really deontic modality you are gravitating toward
>here?  In other words, in the end aren't you really going to end up
>saying that scientific assumptions are of the form "One ought (not) to do
>X"?  If so, it might be best to short-circuit the excursion through
>directives and go right to the question of seeing these things as part
>of the hoary old problem of getting an "ought" from an "is" (or at
>least dealing with "oughts").

Yes, I think you're right.

At that point, the derivation of (a) doesn't seem to me to be very
mysterious.  We aren't really going from an "is" to an "ought".  There is a
pre-existing "ought":

   (c) One ought to do what one can to further the science of Linguistics.

(c) is rather obviously aimed at linguists, as (a) is.  And the derivation
of (a) from (c) has already been stated: not assuming (a) produces useless
theories.

And (a) is still in some sense "falsifiable": the arguments that led us to
(a) from (c) depend on other things about our state of knowledge.  If we can
come up with an information source/methodology for dealing with changes in
the fundamental structure of language, (a) will no longer be good advice.
From: frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 20:51:25 GMT
Organization: Security APL, Inc.

In article <1992Nov12.000022.21195@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough) writes:
>My original complaint was with the idea of distinguishing "programs
>with consciousness" from "programs without consciousness" by their
>functional organization---programs with certain functional
>organizations are conscious, and programs with different functional
>organizations are not. This idea doesn't get us anywhere unless we
>know which abstraction function A to use.

By the time you are talking about it as a "program", you have already
abstracted to the functional organization.  (You still have to look at the
program to see what that functional organization is.  And we don't yet know
just what properties the functional organization needs to have in order to
be conscious.)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: holmes@garnet.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes)
Subject: Re: The "validity" of feminist philosophy
Organization: Boise State University
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 16:35:11 GMT

In article <DAVIS.92Nov13115003@passy.ilog.fr> davis@passy.ilog.fr (Harley Davis) writes:
>
>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.

I can't.

>
>-- Harley Davis
>--
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>nom: Harley Davis			ILOG S.A.
>net: davis@ilog.fr			2 Avenue Gallie'ni, BP 85
>tel: (33 1) 46 63 66 66			94253 Gentilly Cedex, France


-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu
From: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill)
Subject: Re: Plato's Views on Women
Originator: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 14:22:54 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.
Keywords: Plato, politics, women, feminism


In article <BxE6rn.IHx@quake.sylmar.ca.us>, brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder) writes:

|> 
|> No.  I think that those who advocated such views were wrong.  Perhaps you 
|> would like to continue to apply that reasoning and advocate "slave philosophy"
|> and "serf philosophy".  What kinds of deep philosophical insights do you
|> think one acquires by being a woman, a slave, or a serf?  

Brian, you're being really dense here.  The point is not what kinds
of insight one acquires by being a woman, a slave, or a serf, but
rather what *position* one may gain by being a "feminist philosopher",
a "slave philospher",  or a "serf philosopher".

In order to make it in the game, you either have to be pretty good
at an established area (history of ancient philosophy, logic and
philosophy of science, epistemology, etc.) or you need to find a
"developing" area to be an "expert" in.  Look at this as market
pressures and the adaptability of academics to an environment in
which most niches are already occupied.  I'm really sorry you
mentioned "serf philosophy".  I'm afraid you've sewn the seed of
a new specialization.
-- 
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams)
Subject: Re: DETERMINISM 1: `Refutation' the first
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 01:21:07 GMT
Organization: Security APL, Inc.

In article <spurrett.30.721248046@superbowl.und.ac.za> spurrett@superbowl.und.ac.za (David Spurrett) writes:
>  That point made, for now, in what way was my argument transcendetal?  The
>initial datum from which I attempted to reason was the experience of 
>choosing,

(A lot of people are reluctant to get into this because this topic comes up
so frequently.  Nevertheless, I feel I must make a reply to this.)

It seems to me that you are making the fundamental mistake of assuming that
you are not part of the world.  For the state of the world, exclusive of
your will (which I take without more precise definition to be part of your
mind), there is more than possible future. Assuming determinism, when
your will is included, there is only one possible future.  So it is quite
consistent with determinism that you can "choose an actual future" (the
quotes are because you have limited information, so aren't choosing exactly
what you think you are choosing).

> and the distinction we (as far as I can tell universally)
>acknowledge between `do-ers' and `do-ees', particularly as manifest in 
>legal systems and procedures.  The analysis which followed attempted to show 
>that belief in this distinction involves disbelief in determinism with 
>respect to do-ers.  If the analysis is correct (and it has not been 
>criticised in this thread yet) then the only avenue for attack is the 
>interpretation of the datum.

The assumption is that certain kinds of systems (specifically people) are
capable of analyzing their behavior and its consequences, and making
rational decisions based on that analysis.  There is nothing in this which
implies that that analysis is non-deterministic.
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.physics,sci.skeptic
From: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee)
Subject: Re: Measurement & Precision
Organization: Johns Hopkins University CS Dept.
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 21:18:04 GMT

In article <1992Nov10.121329.7384@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU> dabbott@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU (Derek Abbott) writes:
>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.

It is interesting to note what you consider interesting.

The point that it is an engineering example is quite important: it's the
biggest difference between the caveman's decision that measuring small things
is impossible, and all the modern-day problems you try to compare it to.
--
"the bogosity in a field equals the bogosity imported from related areas, plus
the bogosity generated internally, minus the bogosity expelled or otherwise
disposed of."  -- K. Eric Drexler

Ken Arromdee (UUCP: ....!jhunix!arromdee; BITNET: arromdee@jhuvm;
     INTERNET: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech