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From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Can Machines Think?
Message-ID: <5767@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 19 Dec 89 21:17:58 GMT
References: <6724@cbnewsh.ATT.COM>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 32

From article <6724@cbnewsh.ATT.COM>, by mbb@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (martin.b.brilliant):
>From article <31821@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>, by dave@cogsci.indiana.edu
>(David Chalmers)...
>
>Slightly edited to make the bones barer:
>
>1. Systems with an appropriate causal structure think.
>2. Programs are a way of formally specifying causal structures.
>3. Physical systems implement programs.
>4. Physical systems which implement the appropriate program think.
>
>I take it that (1) is an acceptable definition.  Does anybody think it
>begs the question? ...

This and similar discussions have seemed to revolve around
an equivocation between theories about how a thing works and
how the thing does work.  1-4 invite this equivocation in several
ways, consequently they do not serve to clarify. `causal' and
`structure' have to do with theory-making -- we attribute
cause/effect and structure to something in our efforts to
understand it.  So 1. in effect says that we can now understand,
or will come to understand, how people think by making a theory
involving cause and structure.  If the former, it's false;  if
the latter, it does beg the question.

If `program' in 3. is read as `theory' and `physical system' read
as thing about which the theory is made, which is the best I can
make of it, 3. is a generalization of 1. -- we can make (good)
theories about things.  As applied to human thought, and interpreted
as a prediction, it likewise begs the question.

			Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu