HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman)
Newsgroups: sci.logic
Subject: Re: infinite state automaton
Date: 8 Sep 92 19:59:32 GMT
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson

In article  <versmiss.715952911@ruulo3> Koen Versmissen writes:
]klaus@hal.nta.no (Klaus Gaarder FNI) writes:

]>A Turing machine can be considered to have an infinite number of
]>states if you define each state by including the contents of the
]>tape in addition to each of the finite number of states, thus giving
]>a countable number of states.
]
]But that doesn't imply that Turing machines are equivalent to ISAs
](Infinite State Automata). After all, assuming a two-letter alphabet,
]just construct an infinite binary branching tree of states and mark 
]all and only the states corresponding to words of the language as 
]accepting ones. This gives you a deterministic ISA with a countable
]number of states for any language, in particular for non r.e. ones.
]So Turing machines are strictly weaker than ISAs.

How are you going to specify this ifinite number of states?  You can't
specify them exhaustively, but you can do things like make sets of
states that recursively call themselves (which gives you something
evivalent to a PDA).  Or you can add an extra part of the automaton
that lets you push and pop states (which gives you a PDA).  Or you can
add a TM tape, which gives you a TM.

Or you can just have a notation for specifying an infinite number of
simple states, but unless you can come up with a notation more
powerful than any known one, you won't be able to specify the states
constructively.  And what would be the point?  Suppose you have a
problem whose solution you can specify non-constructively, say by the
predicate p.  Now you specify an IFA by saying that for all states,
the state is an accepting state iff the input sequence represents (by
some encoding you choose) a value x for which p(x).

What have you gained?  You certainly haven't proven anything about the
computability or constructiveness of the function.  You haven't given
any clues about how to implement it in the real world.  You haven't
produced anything that will help you decide where the function fits in
the (un)computability hierchary.  Basically, everything that
automatons are good for becomes impossible once you allow this sort of
construction.
-- 
					David Gudeman
gudeman@cs.arizona.edu
From: hbe@sonia.math.ucla.edu (H. Enderton)
Newsgroups: sci.logic
Subject: ASL membership roster
Date: 14 Sep 92 22:01:14 GMT
Organization: UCLA Mathematics Department

In the next two weeks or so I need to finish the ASL membership roster,
for publication in the December JSL.  So if you moved this summer (and
you are an ASL member), please let me know.  If you notified the
Illinois office of your new address, then they will tell me.  But if
you notified them only recently (say August or September), then better
let me know directly.

If I got your name or address wrong last year, please let me know, so I
don't do it again.  In particular, I'd like to include the e-mail
address (assuming you read your mail).

If you are *not* a current ASL member (How do you face your friends?),
you can still be helped.  Ask me how.

--Herb Enderton    (hbe@math.ucla.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.logic
From: hvdberg@math.utwente.nl (Harmen van den Berg)
Subject: Sorted Quantification
Originator: hvdberg@math.utwente.nl
Keywords: References on Sorted Quantification 
Organization: University of Twente (Dept. Applied Math.), Enschede, the Netherlands.
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 10:12:16 GMT


Hi there,

I'm looking for references on Sorted Quantification.

Please reply to hvdberg@math.utwente.nl

Thanks, Harmen
-- 



--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.logic
From: jamie@cs.sfu.ca (Jamie Andrews)
Subject: Re: Set of all sets
Organization: CSS, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 02:23:56 GMT

     Actually, there are now several interesting type-free,
consistent, non-trivial set theories.  Gilmore's NaDSet (Journal
of Symbolic Logic 1986) is joined by the "map theory" by ??
(someone from Germany, sorry I've forgotten the name) in the
latest issue of Theoretical Computer Science, and a set theory
by Fairouz Kamareddine in Volume 1 Issue 1 of the new Journal of
Logic, Language and Information.

     Interestingly, the TCS writer and Kamareddine seem not to
have known about each other's work or Gilmore's, though they
refer to Aczel's papers on non-well-founded set theory, which in
turn refer to Gilmore's earlier work.

     All three papers refer to (and, basically, refute) Scott's
1975 paper "Combinators and Classes", which bemoaned the lack of
type-free set theories and implied that set theory was not a
suitable basis for theoretical computer science.  Any of the
three set theories looks like it would work OK as a basis.  (I
prefer Gilmore's for sentimental reasons and because it's simpler.)

     I wouldn't consider NF and its extensions to be really
"type-free" because they sneak type theory ideas in the back
door with the stratification condition.

--Jamie.
  jamie@cs.sfu.ca
"Every \item command in item_list must have an optional argument." LaTeX pg.168
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 14:58:52 GMT

In article <BuHEvo.9qC@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <1992Sep12.034215.16017@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>
>>However it is quite possible that you have it backwards.  Experience
>>has shown true that the problem of  producing mechanized learning is
>>quite hard.  Once we have the right kind of learning, consciousness may
>>actually turn out to be much simpler than we think.
>
>Well, learning is a significant technical problem for AI and psychology,
>but it's not so much of a conceptual problem.  Learning is just a matter
>of having the right sort of causal organization in a system.

But perhaps that is true also of consciousness.

>                             Whereas with consciousness, even once we've
>unconvered all the causal chains in question -- once AI and psychology
>have done their work -- there will remain the further question of
>"why do those causal chains give rise to consciousness"?.

Perhaps so.  But I doubt it.  I suspece that once the causal chains are
known there will be little question as to what consciousness is.

>                                                           So, learning
>is a hard empirical problem, but consciousness is a deeper philosophical
>problem.

It is only deep because people make it deep by becoming mystical about
it.  Perhaps this is because they must use their consciousness to
investigate their consciousness, and this recursiveness becomes a
distraction.

Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman)
Subject: Re: Proof of God's Existence
Organization: UCLA, Mathematics Department
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 92 01:06:21 GMT

In article <1992Sep4.192427.19464@tamsun.tamu.edu> e343mh@tamuts.tamu.edu  
(Michael Hand) writes:
> In article <1992Sep4.040504.3673@math.ucla.edu> barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu  
(Barry Merriman) writes:
>   >Why can't philosophers understand this simple proposition: 
>   >
>   >YOU CAN'T PROVE ANYTHING ABOUT THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE THROUGH PURE 
>   >CONTEMPLATION.
> 
> Oh, everyone *understands* it: the issue is whether it's true.

> _______________________________________________________________________
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Michael Hand                     phone (409)845-5660, fax (409)845-0458
> Dept of Philosophy, Texas A&M Univ, College Station TX 77843-4237 U.S.A.

Are you telling me there are philosophers that still expect to 
prove things through pure contemplation? I thought that went
out with 'I think, therefore I am'.

Perhaps if philosophers would extend their experimental program beyond
mere thought experiments, they would make more progress. Of course
then, they would turn into scientists :-)

(Aside: perhaps, you being a phil guy, you can explain to 
me why descartes ridiculous argument is still presented rather 
uncritically in introductory phil classes. I mean, the professor
never comes out and says 'of course this is total bullshit, but
it reflects the prejudices of the times'. Instead, they treat it as
if its a reasonable argument.)




--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet; NeXTMail is welcome)


Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 02:30:56 GMT

In article <1992Sep11.225949.10095@sco.com> evanh@sco.COM (Evan Hunt) writes:

>I would, at least, deny that it's *obviously* true.  Consider:  If dualism
>is false, then mind cannot be separated from matter; therefore, an object
>which lacks consciousness, no matter how much it looks like you, cannot
>be a complete replica of you.  If consciousness is a dynamic, ongoing
>chemical reaction in your brain, an event rather than a substance, then
>that reaction is a part of your physical structure.  A replica would have
>to include it, and so the replica would therefore possess consciousness
>as well.

OK, and your assertion comes down to "if physicalism is true, then
it's logically necessary that my replica would be conscious".  But
are there any grounds to believe the consequent, apart from prior
faith in physicalism?  I don't doubt that consciousness arises from
dynamic chemical reactions in the brain, but how on earth could
it be logically necessitated by such processes?  On the face of it,
it seems to be a further fact.  I need just a hint of how such an
entailment might go.

Note the disanalogy with things like life.  The aliveness of a system
is entailed by the physical facts about it: the facts about life that
need explaining consist in third-person facts about reproduction,
adaptation, metabolism, and so on, all of which are clearly functional
concepts.  So, as long as the physical gunk is playing the right sorts
of causal role, there's no logical gap there.  Even for cognitive
concepts like learning, the main facts that need explaining are
things like how behaviour improves over time in response to environmental
stimulation, and such facts are obviously entailed by the right kind
of physical/functional story.  Not so with consciousness: even when
you've told the whole story about behaviour and its physical causation,
there still seems to be a vast explanatory gap between that and
the phenomenon of consciousness itself.

-- 
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."
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: ramsay@unixg.ubc.ca (Keith Ramsay)
Subject: Re: Science vs Philosophy of
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 05:20:44 GMT

In article <1992Sep3.104224.25519@math.ucla.edu>
barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) writes:
[...]
|> I think the use of thought-experiments originated in philosophy, so I
|> am not sure it is fair to say that it is "copied" from physics.
|
|Well, lets just say its been very succesful in physics, mainly because
|the thought experiments were built on top of a very true theory
|(Electromagnetism in the case of SR). The problem in phil is the 
|thought experiments are often based solely on the biases of the experimenter,
|not anything objectively true.

In both cases, the purpose is to elucidate the nature of principles.
Is there something more to your comment, besides the claim that
philosophy doesn't have objective truth in it?

|> I also
|> think that the burden of proof is on you to that there is a sensible
|> "cure" to the vagueness of these philosophical questions.
|
|The ''cure'' is that their is no cure. That is, philosophers need
|to realize that many issues defy precise definition and precise 
|resolution. For example, trying to precisely define what 'life' is, or
|'intelligence', etc, not to mention ethical and theological issues.

I'm not certain, but it sounds as though your "cure" amounts simply to
ignoring questions which aren't precisely defined. Such a strategy
only sometimes works best. In particular, many questions which today
are relatively well defined were not so well defined in the past. Just
to reiterate an example I gave in a previous posting, much (probably
most) of 19th century mathematical analysis proceeded without a
precise definition of "function"! No one denies that precision is nice
when you can have it, but you may have to work for a time with
ill-defined notions before arriving at precision.

Keith Ramsay
ramsay@unixg.ubc.ca
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 22:38:43 GMT

In article <1992Sep14.013025.26710@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>	chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>
>>Not so with consciousness: even when
>>you've told the whole story about behaviour and its physical causation,
>>there still seems to be a vast explanatory gap between that and
>>the phenomenon of consciousness itself.
>
>This "seems to be" is controversial:  Dennett in particular questions
>the vastness of the gap (in "Consciousness Explained").  

Sadly, Dennett's arguments don't come to much.  He invokes an analogy
with "life" that misses the point entirely -- *of course* there is
no further fact with life that needs explanation, as the phenomena
in question all present themselves to us as behavioural facts and
functional capacities, from a third-person point of view.  The
analogy with life can take you as far as "mind from the point of view
of cognitive science" -- i.e. mind as the causation of behaviour --
but it doesn't begin to touch on the unique first-person experience
that's in question.

The remainder of Dennett's arguments come down to the dogma that
once one has explained our behavioural capacities, including
our capacity to discriminate environmental stimuli, and our
capacity to produce verbal reports of our mental states, then
one has explained everything -- there's simply nothing more
that could need explaining.  But this is simply ducking the
big question.  The problem was never to explain our functional
capacities -- those were always a relatively straightforward
problem for cognitive science.  The problem was to explain why
those capacities are accompanied by conscious experience.  The
closest Dennett comes to resolving this problem is in the moments
when he bites the bullets and denies the reality of such experience.
That's an audacious move, but not very satisfactory to one who's
not already in the grip of an ideology.

The book is exemplary, however, in that its attempt to deal
with the problem of consciousness consists in an alternation
between two strategies that are beloved by many materialists;
indeed we've seen both in this discussion, viz:

(a) redefine the problem: instead of explaining the experience
of consciousness, explain various functional capacities;

(b) deny the phenomenon: argue that conscious experience in
fact does not exist, but is a mere illusion.

Unfortunately, when these strategies are seen for what they are,
neither of them is very satisfactory.

-- 
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."
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: kmc@netcom.com (Kevin McCarty)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 07:46:31 GMT
Organization: Self
Summary: Mysticism schmysticism.  Facts are facts.

In article <1992Sep11.224807.13323@math.ucla.edu> barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) writes:
>Dualism is simply another form of mysticism. Its the same old
>premise: we don't understand something, therefore there must 
>be a paranormal phenomena at work. 

What mysticism? I don't know what you're railing at.  There's
absolutely nothing paranormal going on at all.  The two
incontrovertible facts at issue here are as plain and mundane as the
nose on your face: there are physical phenomena such as objects, and
there are mental phenomena such as sensations.  And a mystery: how are
they so different?

>I take the historical perspective: this argument has failed in 
>so many contexts, as science one by one develops the understanding, 
>that we should expect this sort of argument to fail again.
>
>The 'soul'  has hopped from organ to organ, as each organs
>function has been elucidated. It used to reside in the heart, 
>and at another point, the kidney, and its come to its final resting
>place in the brain. The brain is harder to unravel than than the heart or 
>kidney, but folks are making steady progress, and I'm sure we'll 
>live to see it exorcised from the brain as well.

Who said anything about a soul?  What's that got to do with anything?
Do you really think that such things as affect, blueness, and the
sonority of a major triad will be exorcised someday?  Why would anyone
want to do that?


-- 
Kevin McCarty (kmc@netcom.com)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: snodgras@cyber.net (John E. Snodgrass)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: invention of time
Date: 6 Sep 92 18:12:15 GMT
Organization: The Cyberspace Station

In article <burt.715296664@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca> burt@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca (Burt Voorhees) writes:
>
>  I'd like to suggest that one can rant against a theory easily if one
>has not taken the time to study it carefully and understand it.  How

 Truth is, when a person has an argument they make it, they don't
sit around whining about how misunderstood they are.

>many curvature tensors has snodgrass computed?  Has he ever solved a
>geodesic equation?  Or is he just spouting hot air?

      Why don't you explain the relevence of these areas and find out?
(Answer: they have no relevence to the questions being raised.)



      John E. Snodgrass
      -----------------
      snodgras@cyber.net
From: bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 10 Sep 92 05:55:46 GMT
Organization: ARL Division of Neural Systems, Memory and Aging, University of
	Arizona

amiga@phobos.unm.edu (carlos a.f  senaenterr) writes:

	   This is the best argument for dualism that I have come across:

   1) What I can imagine is possible.
   2) I can imagine being disembodied.
   3) Therefore, I could be disembodied.
   Note: The form of this argument is Modus Ponens, a valid syllogism.

(1) is false, I'm afraid.  Before Goedel many mathematicians could
imagine finding a set of axioms that would allow any mathematical
statement to be either proved or disproved.  Goedel showed that this
is not possible.  Imagination is not rational: it's easy to imagine
contradictory things as long as the contradictions are sufficiently
obscure.

	-- Bill
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: evanh@sco.COM (Evan Hunt)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Stan's Chosen Ones
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 22:47:53 GMT


Don't blame me, I voted for chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers).
>OK, and your assertion comes down to "if physicalism is true, then
>it's logically necessary that my replica would be conscious".

Very true; my syllogism proves nothing.  But neither does yours,
and that's the point I was trying to establish.

>But are there any grounds to believe the consequent, apart from prior
>faith in physicalism?

None.  I consider it to be the least hypothesis, however, which is why
I place faith in it.

>I don't doubt that consciousness arises from
>dynamic chemical reactions in the brain, but how on earth could
>it be logically necessitated by such processes?

It's not necessitated by the entire class of dynamic chemical reactions,
or else your car's engine would be conscious.  It's logically necessitated
by the *exact duplication* of a process known to cause consciousness.

Here's the argument as I see it:

   Assumption: Physicalism is true.

1) Consciousness arises wholly from the physical structure of the
   brain combined with its present dynamic neurochemical state.
   [This is a restatement of the assumption.]
2) You possess consciousness.
3) An exact copy of you would have the same brain structure and the
   same neurochemical state as you do.
4) Therefore, an exact copy of you would possess consciousness.

I don't see anything controversial in this argument except the assumption,
unless you want to deny statement #2.  As I said, none of this proves
anything; all it does is demonstrate the fallacy in your argument.

-- 
"This coffee is my blood, this breakfast burrito is my flesh.  And
 it cost me 89 cents, so get your goddamned own." - Jeff Lester, "Saint 11"
From: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Hidden Variables
Date: 9 Sep 92 17:23:33 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.
Originator: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com


As soon as I sent my last posting, I remembered another good example
of a contributer to to quite disparate fields:  Ernest Moody (medieval
philosophy and Wall Street).
-- 
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
From: epfaith@sunkist.berkeley.edu (Edward Paul Faith)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 10 Sep 1992 12:48:59 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Math. Department.
NNTP-Posting-Host: sunkist.berkeley.edu

Writes amiga@phobos.unm.edu (carlos a.f  senaenterr)
in article <29sn2qc@lynx.unm.edu>:

> 1)  What I can imagine is possible.
> 2)  I can imagine being disembodied.
> 3)  Therefore, I could be disembodied.

In the replies to this that I have read so far, attention was paid
to the untruth of "What I can imagine is possible."  
But I think that it also is worthwhile to explain why anyone would
say such a false thing.  It turns out that there are two quite separate
senses of the word "possible", and according to one sense, it is
indeed true that "What I can imagine is possible."

The first use is objective, and descriptive.  It is possible to use the
human hand to manipulate things.  This is the notion that is
important for the dualist argument, because a soul is shown to be
separate from matter if it is inherently possible for it to be
disembodied.

The other use is subjective.  It is possible for all you know that I
have brown eyes.  And yet to one of my friends it may be
impossible.  Possibility is descriptive not of my eyes, but of your
relationship to my eyes.

Now, let us look at " What I can imagine is possible." in this
light.  It turns out that it is true when we use "possible" subjectively.
But it is false when we use "possible" objectively.  So the whole
argument is in fact trivially true if we use "possible" subjectively.
But then it is not useful to dualists.
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech