Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!violet!cpshelley
From: cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley)
Subject: Re: Minds, machines, and Godel
Message-ID: <1991Jan21.145355.8939@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Owner of Many System Processes)
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <28154@cs.yale.edu> <1991Jan19.055638.27731@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <28203@cs.yale.edu> <1991Jan21.022919.13895@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 91 14:53:55 GMT
Lines: 28

In article <1991Jan21.022919.13895@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <28203@cs.yale.edu> mcdermott-drew@cs.yale.edu (Drew McDermott) writes:
>
>>Well, I think this idealization *is* unreasonable, and perhaps we
>>should leave the dispute at that.
>
>It comes down to whether you think a competence/performance distinction makes
>sense when applied to human mathematical capacities (where competence
>idealizes away from mistakes, death and boredom as performance factors).  It's
>obviously controversial.  I think the notion makes some sense; enough sense
>for the purposes of this argument, though it's not entirely clear-cut.
>Others obviously disagree.  It's a complex matter that's probably not
>worth getting into here.  

And number theory isn't? :>  I think this thread has been interesting and
it's worthwhile dicussing competence limits, but their relationship to
performance is of importance to the "comp.ai" part of "comp.ai.philosophy".
This has already occured in the last thread regarding Searle's chinese
room, so perhaps a different Gedankenexperiment would be appropriate.
I would like to point out that we do have other options than the standard
TM for modeling humans: namely non-deterministic TM's.  Off the top of
my head, I'd say they'd be a better place to start.

--
      Cameron Shelley        | "Absurdity, n.  A statement of belief
cpshelley@violet.waterloo.edu|  manifestly inconsistent with one's own
    Davis Centre Rm 2136     |  opinion."
 Phone (519) 885-1211 x3390  |				Ambrose Bierce