HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 2 Oct 92 17:22:55 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <1992Oct1.200238.23660@ttinews.tti.com> jackson@soldev.tti.com (Dick Jackson) writes:

>I
>and others here I think) find it satisfying to hold that our mental states
>have evolved to enhance our fitness in an exactly parallel way to our
>obviously physical parts. In other words, my introspection, my
>model of your mental states, my feeling of embarassment when you point
>out my error of logic, all make me function in a superior way to a being
>physically similar to myself, but having, perhaps, just a sort of
>"robotic" approach to survival, food gathering, etc. Further, my kind of
>consciousness is the best possible for my kind of species (it it were not,
>better fitted rival models would have chased it out of the competition
>hundreds of generations ago).

You have an over-optimistic view of the capabilities of evolution. It
can do incredible feats of "design" over millenia, but being blind, it
can get trapped in local maxima in its hill-climbing attempts at
optimisation, and in the short term is vulnerable to foolish
compromise. For example, since we breathe and eat with our mouths, it
is very handy to be provided with a locking system which prevents us
breathing our food. Most animals have a very secure locking system for
this. But when humans started speaking, speech was such a great
evolutionary advantage that speech adaptations have sometimes been
made at the cost of others. One of these is that due to recent
speech-directed adaptations of the tongue and throat, we can breathe
our food. It seems that the occasional person choking to death on food
was a small price to pay for speech. And the occasional woman dying in
childbirth is worth that little extra increment of brain size that
makes childbirth so difficult for our species.

Since our kind of consciousness is relatively recent in evolutionary
terms it might well be a bit of a mess. The better models which could
chase it into extinction might require too much re-organisation, i.e.,
a temporary descent down the hill of evolutionary fitness. And even if
these better models one day appear, our basically flawed design may by
then have accrued so many useful accessories as to render it
impregnable. Rather like the current design of internal combustion
engine.

Indeed, improbable though it might be, if one considers qualia to have
evolved because in themselves they confer an advantage, one must
recognise the theoretical possibility that the advantage may have been
purely local, i.e., in the long view they may actually be a mistake,
rather like our inside-out retina.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 05:05:13 GMT

In article <1992Sep28.005156.11177@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:

>RH:
>>>Show me a point of difference between my conscious experiences and the
>>>cor[r]elated physical events in my brain.
>
>DC:
>>Just about anything -- e.g. the blueness of my blue-experiences.
>
>It would be useful to me if you could expand on this a bit.  For
>certainly the experience of 475 nanometer electromagnetic radiation
>has to feel like something to us (since we "feel" everything we
>experience), and we happen to label this something blueness.  Are you
>seeking an explanation of why blue light isn't experienced as,
>say, pain?  For that I think we would have to turn to the evolutionary
>development of the brain.

Precisely what needs to be explained is why that radiation "feels"
like anything at all -- i.e. why that all physical processing is
accompanied by an experiential feel -- so your parenthetical
explanation here won't do.  There is also the secondary question
of why it feels like *that* rather than like *this* -- it seems
perfectly coherent that our blue experiences and red experiences
could be systematically inverted, for instance.  Even when all
the physical facts are in, it seems arbitrary why one kind of process
is accompanied by this experience, and another kind by that one.
As I said in another post, evolution won't do as an explanation,
as it will only get you as far as the current physical details.
Evolution is irrelevant to the question of why *this* physical
sructure gives rise to *this* experiential feel.

-- 
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: daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: ORA Corporation
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 16:56:17 GMT

In article <1992Oct02.202707.126376@Cookie.secapl.com>,
frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:

>>I also don't believe that mental states are determined by physical
>>states. I believe that the relationship between a mental state and the
>>corresponding physical state to be something like the relationship
>>between an algorithm and a corresponding implementation, or the
>>relationship between a theory and its models.
>
>Two very different analogies.  I *can* in principle determine the algorithm
>from the implementation (although there may be cases where I am not smart
>enough to do so).

I disagree. In implementing an algorithm as a physical system, there
will be some state variables that will be used as inputs, some that
will be used as outputs, some that will be used as "scratch paper",
some that will be used as memory. Still other state variables will be
completely irrelevant to the algorithm (for example, in most computers
such things as the temperature of the CPU, which is certainly a state
variable of the computer as a physical system, is completely
irrelevant). It is not possible (even in principle) to uniquely
interpret a physical system as an implementation of an algorithm
without knowing more about implementation conventions.

>But it is not in general possible to determine the theory
>from the model.[1]
>
>I think the first is the better analogy, and that mental states can be
>determined from the physical states.

I don't think so.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: The Cosmological Bad Dream
Date: 6 Oct 92 18:06:12 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <1992Oct05.202904.62326@Cookie.secapl.com>, frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:
> In article <1992Oct3.105750.43545@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>>     One of the conditions for a felicitous *assertion* is that the
>>speaker have evidence for its truth at the time of utterance. 
>>Since a testable, non-obvious and therefore non-trivial scientific
>>hypothesis is supported or falsified or revised for years after it
>>is stated, it seems to me that a scientific hypothesis cannot be an
>>assertion.  This works out empirically: if the hearer of an
>>assertion later discovers a single counter-example, (s)he concludes
>>that the assertion was false.
> 
> Not really.  If I assert, "I saw the man come in.  He was tall, thin,
> brown-haired, wore glasses, and smoking a cigar.", and it turns out his hair
> is actually black instead of brown, you don't necessarily conclude that my
> assertion was "false".  It *do* conclude that it was not correct in every
> detail.
> 
> Scientific hypotheses are like this; they have a lot of detail, and some of
> the detail can be wrong without falsifying the assertion as a whole.

I disagree on the ground of elementary logic: the assertion you give
here is a simple conjunction of six propositions; the falsity of any
one of them makes the conjunction false.

Since I am claiming that scientific hypotheses are not assertions, I
do not disagree with what you say about scientific hypotheses.
-- 
-Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> {Sometimes you have to look reality straight
 OPINIONS ARE MY OWN            {in the eye, and deny it. - G. Keillor
From: lawhead@cs.olemiss.edu (Pam Lawhead)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Margaret Masterman
Date: 1 Oct 92 21:29:43 GMT
Organization: University of Mississippi, Dept. of Computer Science

I am trying to find out information about Margaret Masterman who wrote
"The Nature of a Paradigm" published in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge
by Lakatos and Musgrave in 1970.  
I searched our little library and could find nothing but citations about
her.  In the book it states that she is part of the Cambridge Language
Research Unit but I could find nothing about that either.  If you
have any ideas I would appreciate e-mail to:
lawhead@cs.olemiss.edu
Thanks,

Pam Lawhead
The University of Mississippi
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Boise State University
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 15:54:32 GMT

In article <1992Sep28.203519.133337@Cookie.secapl.com> frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:
>In article <Bv9vGp.Ax3@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>>Precisely what needs to be explained is why that radiation "feels"
>>like anything at all -- i.e. why that all physical processing is
>>accompanied by an experiential feel -- so your parenthetical
>>explanation here won't do.  There is also the secondary question
>>of why it feels like *that* rather than like *this* -- it seems
>>perfectly coherent that our blue experiences and red experiences
>>could be systematically inverted, for instance.
>
>Do you think how it feels has no behavioral consequences?  Would you behave
>as you do if your blue experiences and your pain experiences were
>systematically inverted?

My answer to this is "Yes" if you replace "pain" with "red" above; I
think the answer is still "Yes" to the question as you have posed it,
but the exchange you propose, unlike the "blue" for "red" exchange, is
impossible to imagine.  Don't confuse the bare experience of "pain"
(of various kinds) with the automatic reactions to pain.
-- 
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
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 07:10:34 GMT

In article <1992Sep29.154632.17451@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:

>The fallacy of
>Chalmers' argument is that he provides a general technique for
>deducing that in _any_ situation where we have two bodies of knowledge
>which are actually about the same referents, the referents must be
>different;

I do no such thing.  You note that my original argument said nothing
about "identity", and that was for a reason.  Rather, it was about
supervenience.  You'll even recall that I said the argument "there
could be non-physical qualia, therefore qualia aren't physical"
was invalid.  The argument I gave was very specific, regarding a set
of facts that are supposed to logically exhaust all the facts about
the world (i.e. the physical facts), and arguing that in fact this
set of facts does not logically determine all the facts about the
world.

>as long as we do not realize that the objects of the two
>domains are the same, we can imagine a world in which they turn out to
>be different, which is a logically possible world, so the two subjects
>are different (although they may supervene in the actual world).  The
>fallacy is that "imaginable" is not equal to "possible"; the world
>"imagined" in this kind of argument is actually usually "possible",
>but the way in which we would correlate phenomena in that world with
>phenomena in the actual world would change as soon as we had
>sufficient information about the actual world (see my "strangeness"
>example).

Right.  In general that kind of argument from possibility to lack
of identity breaks down because of further facts about the way the
world is, facts contained on neither side of the equation.  In this
case, however, one of the sides is supposed to carry all the facts
about the way the world is (i.e. the physical facts).  So there
isn't room for that kind of "new information".

-- 
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: frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams)
Subject: Re: nano-replicator assumptions
Date: Tue, 06 Oct 1992 01:16:03 GMT
Organization: Security APL, Inc.

In article <3027@news.cerf.net> snodgras@cyber.net (John E. Snodgrass) writes:
> Without the purpose of attempting to survive, organisms
>would not evolve. (But one cannot logically assert this purpose
>also evolved.)

The depth of misunderstanding in this statement boggles the mind.  The
ESSENSE of the Darwinian theory of evolution is that no "purpose" of
attempting to survive is required for evolution.  Mutating, self-replicating
entities evolve, purpose or no.  You might as well assert that things fall
because they have a purpose of being at a lower level.

>>       You might argue that it has no application to the real
>>world; that complex behavior in the real world always arises from
>>the "complex control systems interact[ing], each intent on
>>maintaining the identity of its own system". But this ignores the
>>fact that much real-world behavior is like the behavior of the
>>mathematical systems.
>
>       Only in that it is unpredictable.

The patterns of activity simulated by non-linear mathematical systems are
very much like the patterns seen in many systems in the real world.  To say,
"only in that it is unpredictable" is to ignore the facts.
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 21:55:32 GMT

In article <1992Sep25.194311.138446@Cookie.secapl.com> frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:

>What I am asserting is that you are looking for (insisting on) the wrong
>kind of explanation of consciousness, and that the reason you are looking
>for this kind of explanation is that you refuse to take seriously the idea
>that you are a physical system.  If you really accept this, then an
>explanation in the form "these aspects of the system are your
>consciousness; when it gets these kinds of inputs, it reacts in this kind
>of way, which is your qualia" *is* a full explanation of consciousness. I
>don't think it is necessary to *agree* that "you are a physical system" to
>understand this; although for me personally, when I understood this point,
>my last objections to physicalism disappeared.

Well, this seems to be the net.physicalist.position.of.choice.  Qualia
just *are* physical events; don't ask why.  Unfortunately, it's
entirely unsatisfactory.  For this position to be any good, you have to
provide some reason why God couldn't have created a world with isomorphic
physical events, but no qualia.  And that's what you can't do.  Note
that "qualia are physical, therefore She couldn't" is utterly circular,
as the physicality of qualia is precisely what's at issue.  (Though
the passage above suggests that you want to be able to take it as an
unquestioned axiom.)

This position seems to flirt between some kind of property dualism
(qualia are a new kind of thing in the catalog of the universe; *but*
they're physical, no doubt about it) and some kind of brute physicalism
(everything's physical and don't ask why).  Either way, the call for
an entailment relation (or alternatively, the call for an explanation
of why qualia exist at all) is being evaded entirely.

-- 
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: holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Boise State University
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 14:58:37 GMT

In article <Bv9AIx.HBz@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <1992Sep25.145109.20168@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:
>
>>Show me a point of difference between my conscious experiences and the
>>corelated physical events in my brain.  I know that I use different
>>language to talk about them; that doesn't constitute evidence of a
>>difference.
>
>Just about anything -- e.g. the blueness of my blue-experiences.
>If the facts about my brain were exhausted by the facts given to
>us by physics, then there'd be no reason to suppose that there
>were any blue-experiences going on at all.
>
>-- 
>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."

But this is not a point of difference.  There is nothing to indicate
that a physical system does not have "subjective blueness"; we simply
do not know how to ask such a question.  And I do NOT think that
"blueness" is an additional property of "blue-experiences"; I think it
is the bare identity of a factor in "blue-experiences" (which factor
is a physical event of some kind).
-- 
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
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: kmc@netcom.com (Kevin McCarty)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 19:57:55 GMT
Organization: Self
Summary: Counting classes of things; phenomena vs. events themselves

In article <1992Sep28.151204.4333@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:
>By asking for an "entailment", you _assume_ a difference between the
>two sets of phenomena.  I claim that there is no reason to assume such
>a difference.  I can imagine worlds in which it would be reasonable to
>conclude that there was such a difference; but we do not live in one
>(so far as I can tell).  Being able to imagine something is not the
>same as constructing a logically possible world.  I assume that there
>is no difference between the phenomena until I see some way in which
>they behave differently (in the most general sense of "behave"; I am
>not talking "behaviourism").  This is not "fiat" unless there are
>points of difference between the events already established; but there
                                                              ^^^ ^^^^^
>are no such points of difference established; there are, of course,
 ^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^  ^^^^^ ^^^  ^^ ^^^^^^
>obvious differences in our information about the two classes of events
 ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^                              ^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^^

I find the assertion before the semicolon to be in flat-out
contradiction to the statement after the semicolon.  In the latter
statement you are allowing that there are two classes of events
which you admit have obvious differences.  Can we then take these
as established points of difference?  It seems to me that the
explanation of those points of difference are what is at issue here.

>but using these to conclude that the events themselves are
>different is unsound, even if you dress it up with talk about possible

In watching you argue this for days, you appear to resist admitting
that "events themselves" give rise to different phenomena because you
seem to think that's the same thing as saying the "events themselves"
are different.  But my understanding of the term "phenomenon" is that
it denotes how things appear to us, not how things are.  Now I can
remain puzzled about whether dualism is true in its catalog of the
ontological furniture of the universe, but I am utterly baffled how
anyone can maintain that there aren't at least two classes of
phenomena in the world (never mind where they come from).

You look like you are admitting that, but whenever the specific question
is put to you, you seem to deny it.  So let me draw attention to
the words that have come out of your mouth and ask you again:
how many classes of phenomena do you count?
-- 
Kevin McCarty (kmc@netcom.com)
From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 1 Oct 92 03:14:11 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <1992Sep30.010007.21214@leland.Stanford.EDU> ledwards@leland.Stanford.EDU (Laurence James Edwards) writes:

>Second, it
>seems advantageous to be conscious of pain (i.e. be able to think about it)
>so that one can figure out why one is in pain. That way one can avoid similar
>situations in the future, or one can choose to ignore the pain if the
>situation requires. 

There are chess programs which manage to figure out why they are in
check, can learen how to avoid it in future, put up with it if
neceessary for some greater purpose, etc., all without needing to be
conscious of being in check. 
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech