From: daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: ORA Corporation
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 13:49:29 GMT

In article <7595@skye.ed.ac.uk>, jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
writes:

>>Jeff, accusing people of being "in the grips of an ideology", as
>>Searle calls it is nothing but sophomoric name-calling. 

>I don't agree.

Sigh. Okay, then what is clarified by Searle's use of the phrase "in
the grips of an ideology"?

>Saying something is sophomoric name-calling _is_ a cheap debating
>trick, though.

Right, the cheapest debating trick is to tell the truth.

>>Why is it more "ideological" to believe that behavior is sufficient
>>than to believe that behavior is *not* sufficient?
>
>I suppose one might hold the view that every position is ideological.

I wasn't saying that at all. I *don't* believe that the Strong AI
position is ideological.

>But not everyone is equally gripped, nor are all ideologies equally
>distorting.

I don't know what you mean by "equally gripped", other than "equally
sure of the manifest truth of their beliefs". Do you really think that
Searle is *less* gripped by an ideology by this definition?

And what do you mean by saying that an ideology is "distorting" other
than saying it is false?

>Besides, I think we should try to avoid going down the 
>road to "everything is ideology, and hence all views equally good."

Nobody has said that all views are equally good.

>Now, these people [people who believe in the Turing Test]
>do not all agree with each other.  There are a
>number of different views involved, and they can exploit this to
>attack any attempt to characterize them.  Some of them aren't
>behaviorists, some aren't verificationists, etc. But there is a
>persistent bias towards things that can be assessed from the
>third-person point of view, and I think this needs some explanation.
>
>If you don't like my explanation, why not suggest another one?

People are biased towards the third-person point of view because that
is where progress can be made. Discussing inner experience doesn't
seem to get us anywhere. You can say that consciousness *is* inner
experience, regardless of whether there is any observable physical
properties associated with that experience. I think most people would
agree with that. But how does that get you anywhere? How does that
help to argue that this is conscious and that is not?

Nothing seems to *follow* from first-person experience, and both
science and philosophy are about exploring consequences of things.

>>The problem you are worried about isn't peculiar to verificationists.
>>Even if everyone believes that there is absolute right and wrong, and
>>even if everyone believes that there are means to establish truth
>>beyond logic and empiricism, you are still stuck if (1) people
>>disagree about what is true, and (2) people disagree about what is a
>>good way to reason about truth.
>
>Sure, but I don't think we should just give up in the face of this.
>And what happens if people succeed in disrediting the idea of rational
>debate in cases where we don't have some "objective" way to decide?

Who is trying to discredit the idea of rational debate?

>>Thus your complaint boils down to: there is a problem if people can't
>>agree on important things.
>
>Not at all.  There are problems at several levels.  That removing
>a problem at one level would leave problems at others doesn't
>mean the former problem "boils down to" some sort of general
>"there will be disagreement always".
>
>Once again it seems that someone (in this case, you) is trying
>to make it seem that if we can't solve some problem completely
>(in some sense), there's no point in taking any steps in that
>direction at all.

I didn't say that! I didn't *imply* that! I was only taking issue with
your suggestion that verificationists and falsificationists were the
bad guys preventing you from trying to address hard problems.

>If people are always going to disagree on some important things,
>there's not point is getting some people to agree on some of them.
>The same sort of thing happens in the TT debates: for instance, if
>looking at functional organization can't get us all the way to other
>minds, there's no point in considering it at all.

Nobody said that. All I have said is that I disagree with the
arguments that functional organization is important.

It seems to me, Jeff, that when people disagree with you, you assume
that it is for ideological reasons, or because they are
verificationists, or whatever. In the cases where there is no
objective reasons for believing something, I can still believe
something different from you.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech