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From: cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Minds, machines, and Godel
Message-ID: <3857@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 17 Jan 91 21:55:58 GMT
References: <1991Jan16.035058.7465@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <91Jan16.135532edt.1132@neuron.ai.toronto.edu> <1991Jan17.040803.8205@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Reply-To: cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Organization: Dept of AI, Edinburgh University, UK.
Lines: 22

In article <1991Jan17.040803.8205@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:

>Yes, but then we'd just Godelize that one.  The point is that for any
>given TM there exists a sentence where our capabilities differ, so we can't
>be any given TM.

Only if you have decided to limit your TM, as others have pointed out,
to working exclusively from one set of axioms, and to being consistent.
But even if you do decide to limit your TM in this way, all your
argument claims is that people can't be such machines -- and who ever
proposed that they might be? What you are trying to reach at with this
argument is the conclusion that computers can't be smart like people.
People happily perform these Goedelian tricks by changing axiom systems,
i.e., in effect switching from being one kind of your limited TMs to
another. But what is to stop the construction of a Universal Turing
Machine, which can be any particular of your limited TMs it pleases?
Such a machine would no more suffer from the "Goedel limit" than people
do, for the same reasons.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aipna   +44 31 667 1011 x2550
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK             DoD #205