Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!munnari.oz.au!mel.dit.csiro.au!latcs1!jane
From: jane@latcs2.lat.oz.au (Jane Philcox)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Pseudo-machine
Message-ID: <1991May17.065626.6198@latcs2.lat.oz.au>
Date: 17 May 91 06:56:26 GMT
References: <5329@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> <1991May16.101759.1757@cs.ruu.nl> <1991May16.133818.11606@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Comp Sci, La Trobe Uni, Australia
Lines: 27

In article <1991May16.133818.11606@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>>In <5329@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> jones@amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov (JONES, THOMAS) writes:

>>>I claim that we have a pseudo-issue and a pseudo-question.  The reason is
>>>that you could convert all of the  matter in the Universe into memory

>Where do you get all this old logical-positivistic jargon?

Is it jargon?  At least I understood what it meant, and I don't know what
"logical-positivistic" means.

>>>for such a device, without having nearly enough.  Thus the existence of
>>>such a device would be radically impossible.
>>>
>This by no means renders it an uninteresting question. Consider, for instance,
>the meditations on the behaior of point-masses in physics. Newton would never
>have got going without it.

Did Tom say it was an uninteresting question?  I thought he  made a perfectly 
valid, if slightly cynical, comment on the problems that one would have to face 
in dealing with it.  What would normally be considered part of a discussion,
and a comment that I, for one, found interesting.  

Regards, Jane.
-- 

           A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.