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From: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk (Gordon Joly)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: The I of the beholder
Message-ID: <1629@ucl-cs.uucp>
Date: 17 Jun 91 09:20:49 GMT
Sender: news@cs.ucl.ac.uk
Lines: 40

Drew McDermott writes:
 > 
 >   In article <1991Jun12.232457.2962@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
 >   >Conversants never do, in
 >   >fact, know that they are talking about the same things.  It is always
 >   >a matter of convention, convergence, and good fortune -- even in the
 >   >case of "mathematical truths".  When you and I both talk about "that
 >   >chair over there", our internal models differ substantially, but not
 >   >enough to make most practical interactions too difficult.  And the
 >   >cchir itself changes imperceptibly from one moment to the next as it
 >   >loses and gains atoms and suffers thermal agitations of its internal
 >   >degrees of freedom.  There is no chair, indeed, from a modern physical
 >   >point of view, only boundaries imposed by observers....
 > 
 > Okay, but what about this objection: There are no observers, indeed,
 > but only boundaries imposed by .... who??
 > 
 > Why do we grant such rock-solid existence to observers and not to
 > chairs?
 > 
 > Surely we're not genuflecting toward the almighty self here?
 > 
 > I think this is a genuine conundrum, but whatever solution we work out
 > for explaining why people are objectively real will also work for
 > chairs.  In any case it will not do to say that the reality of 
 > macroscopic objects is merely imposed by an observer, because the
 > observer is itself just another macroscopic object.
 > 
 >                                              -- Drew McDermott

As Rufus T. Firefly said, "any child of five can see that this is a
chair. Bring me a child of five..."

____

Gordon Joly                                       +44 71 387 7050 ext 3716
Internet: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk          UUCP: ...!{uunet,ukc}!ucl-cs!G.Joly
Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, LONDON WC1E 6BT

                    Order is paramount in anarchy.