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From: miken@wheaties.ai.mit.edu (Michael N. Nitabach)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Can Machines Think?
Message-ID: <5610@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 19 Dec 89 22:57:51 GMT
References: <6724@cbnewsh.ATT.COM> <5767@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: miken@rice-chex.WISC.EDU (Michael N. Nitabach)
Organization: The MIT AI Lab, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 19

In article <5767@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu
(Greg Lee) says:

>`causal' and
>`structure' have to do with theory-making -- we attribute
>cause/effect and structure to something in our efforts to
>understand it.

This view of the fundamental nature of causation derives from a particular
metaphysical tradition, beginning with the British Empiricists, e.g. Locke
and Hume.  This is the view that causation is not an aspect of the world
which our mentality can recognize, but rather a schema which our mind imposes
on events with appropriate spatiotemporal relations.  A conceptually
opposite--Realist--stance would be that causation exists as an actual
attribute of certain pairs of physical events.  Greg's argument in that posting
rests on a particular metaphysical assumption, and not on a simple matter
of definition or brute fact.

Mike Nitabach