tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post9104856459086037190..comments2024-03-29T02:29:03.388-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: Links for a new yearEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger83125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-61976321459263537262020-03-02T01:46:33.895-08:002020-03-02T01:46:33.895-08:00OK, let's leave it there.OK, let's leave it there.David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-22026103300414679342020-02-25T08:26:27.371-08:002020-02-25T08:26:27.371-08:00For someone who is talking about functions in the ...For someone who is talking about functions in the “mathematical sense”, Kripke sure uses the word “meant” a lot. Ross uses it too, in reference to Kripke’s argument; although he uses the word “understanding” a lot more, as well as a mention of synonyms (“Equivalent but nonsynonymous functions would give the same arrays from inputs to outputs”). Sure sounds to me as though he means something more than just mathematical mappings.<br /><br />But you insist that he is talking about only physics — if that were true, then yes, his argument certainly fails. Saying that physics can’t determine the physics is not just a failed argument, but a stupid one; and since I don’t think Ross was a moron, I believe your interpretation is a pretty uncharitable reading. I think it’s much more reasonable to see him as saying something about semantics or interpretation or intentionality. However I don’t have anything more to say about that way of reading him that I haven’t already said.<br />Mr. Greennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-74614427438980910692020-02-22T05:00:42.304-08:002020-02-22T05:00:42.304-08:00Well, in several places Ross talks about 'pure...Well, in several places Ross talks about 'pure functions', and I'm not sure what he means by this. But the main plank of his argument is his use of Kripke's quus and Kripke is definitely talking about functions in the mathematical sense.<br /><br />Forget about meanings! Ross doesn't mention them. We are using numbers to label or name certain physical states. We get the first input into the state labelled '2' and the second in the state '3', press the start button, the machine whirs for a bit and stops with the output in the state labelled '5', and so on. Given these assignments of numbers to states, saying that the machine adds is a very compact way of describing what the machine does. The physics, in other words. And we are agreed on the physics, it seems. No mention of meanings. David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-24821774198436586502020-02-18T19:19:31.785-08:002020-02-18T19:19:31.785-08:00A few comments ago, what Ross meant by “function” ...A few comments ago, what Ross meant by “function” was “mysterious”. Now that you want to attack him from a different angle, it is suddenly “clear” to you that he means exactly what you mean by “function”. <br /><br />We agreed — or so I thought you confirmed — that meanings had to be decided <i>in order to get a particular degree of determinacy</i>. A physical pile of parts does not tell you there is a machine. Agreeing that there is a machine does not tell you the inputs and outputs. Agreeing on the inputs does not tell you the meaning. Agreeing on the meaning does not tell you whether the machine is malfunctioning or was assembled incorrectly, etc. The are multiple levels of indeterminacy, and that we can’t even get partial determinacy without making these agreements just proves Ross’s point. Of course we can get determinacy <i>after</i> we agree on such issues; you couldn’t determine XOR vs XNOR because we hadn’t agreed on enough. But we agreed completely on the physics; therefore the physics is not sufficiently determinate.<br />Mr. Greennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-46996496836113251392020-02-15T15:46:07.124-08:002020-02-15T15:46:07.124-08:00In the case of the PR machine I think you are equi...In the case of the PR machine I think you are equivocating on 'function'. It's clear that Ross is talking about mathematical functions, not purposes.<br /><br />If we take 0 to represent light off and 1 to represent light on we get XOR. If we take 0 to represent light on and 1 to represent light off we get XNOR. But we agreed earlier that what counted as input and output and how these physical states were to be represented by numbers had to be decided in advance, else Ross's use of Kripke's quus can't get started. His claim is that even after all this is decided the function is indeterminate. Not so.<br />David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-3982306913435173722020-02-13T17:06:16.739-08:002020-02-13T17:06:16.739-08:00And that failure means you failed to tell me what ...And that failure means you failed to tell me what function the machine serves. You see, it is actually my “The British are Coming” machine: one button if by land, two if by sea, and a light for signalling Paul Revere. Of course, now that you mention it, it occurs to me that the same machine could by a strange coincidence ALSO serve perfectly well to perform the XOR function. And now that I’m mentioning it, it will occur to you that it could also equally well serve to perform the XNOR function (which are of course two different functions — in fact they are opposites). <br /><br />Yet you clearly understood exactly what the machine was doing <i>physically</i>. You have yourself demonstrated Ross’s conclusion: knowing the physics, or even that it was a machine, or even what the inputs and outputs were, you were unable to determine “the” function. Physics simply cannot determine whether it is “really” performing the British-are-coming function or the XOR function or the XNOR function or the paperweight function or any other that might apply.<br />Mr. Greennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-7554907510357395532020-02-12T17:38:07.332-08:002020-02-12T17:38:07.332-08:00Ross is wrong in so far as his use of Kripke to de...Ross is wrong in so far as his use of Kripke to demonstrate the indeterminacy of the physical falls short of its goal. The jewel, or rather Ross's use of it, is flawed.<br /><br />I fail to see a distinction between the machine and the formed matter that constitutes it.<br /><br />The relation between inputs and outputs is what computer people call 'exclusive OR' : (0,0)-->0, (0,1)-->1, (1,0)-->1, (1,1)-->0. The exact way of achieving this doesn't matter as long as it's reliable. The circuit an electrician would install for controlling a hall light from two switches would do. <br />David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-56058224682232995682020-02-11T17:25:39.534-08:002020-02-11T17:25:39.534-08:00then I reply that Ross has added nothing with his ...<i>then I reply that Ross has added nothing with his use of Kripke. We have been here before.</i><br /><br />If Ross has added nothing, then he is not wrong, just extravagant. (A steamroller is not necessary to crack a walnut, but it will indeed split the shell.) If Ross is right — even if he’s driving a steamroller — the the aforementioned emboldened claim is true. So you seem to be making two claims: the argument in Ross’s form goes overboard (which may be the case), and that the argument in Feser’s form is wrong. But if Feser is wrong then Ross is not “extravagant”, he too is just plain wrong. We have been here before, but I get the feeling that each time we get back here you go off in the other direction.<br /><br />Now, I also wish Ross had defined the term “function”. In context, he certainly means more than just a mapping; I’d say his definition has to incorporate meaning or intention. (For instance, if f(<i>x</i>) = <i>x</i>+0 and g(<i>x</i>) = <i>x</i>×1, then the mapping of ℝ→ℝ is the same for both functions, but clearly adding and multiplying are different operations.) Perhaps this is leading to confusion over the word “machine”. Really, a machine is a device for performing some task — some Rossian “function”. It’s not merely a pile of parts (mere physics); the term implies “parts organised to perform some specific actions”. So it’s true in some sense that we can read the function off from the machine, because it’s only a “machine” in virtue of already knowing something about the operation(s) it is supposed to perform. So we can read (perhaps, some) determinacy off a <i>machine</i> but not off the mere clump of atoms that it constitutes on a purely physical level.<br /><br /><i>And this I say is fully determinate, once we have decided what counts as input and output.</i><br /><br />OK, here’s my machine: it has two inputs, buttons that you can push in or out, and an output, a light that turns on or off. When either one button or the other is depressed, the light goes on. When both buttons are depressed, or neither, the light goes out. You can ask any question about the physics (but there’s nothing else to discover other than that the machine behaves exactly as I’ve described.) So you can tell me what function the machine is performing, right?<br />Mr. Greennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-18628122951510673002020-02-05T13:19:39.141-08:002020-02-05T13:19:39.141-08:00Not sure what you mean by a particular Kripke inde...Not sure what you mean by a <i>particular</i> Kripke indeterminacy. As far as I can see from WRPL, Kripke's argument is that if I make a machine to 'capture' what I think 'plus' means then my intention is undetermined by said machine. This is very general and applies to all machines. I accept this. I agree with Kripke that this gambit doesn't defeat the sceptic. Ross wants to go further and show that there is something indeterminate about the machine itself, and here I disagree. I think that the argument I gave in my last comment defeats Ross's claim. I have said that Ross's mistake is to ignore the possibility of 'taking the machine apart' to see how it works. If you think my argument is faulty please tell me where I go wrong.<br /><br />You say that we can tell what the machine is doing physically but we can't tell what <i>function</i> it's performing. Again, I'm not sure in what sense you are using the word 'function'. I confess that Ross also sometimes uses 'function' somewhat mysteriously for me. Since we are talking about mathematical functions I take it to have its usual mathematical meaning, namely, the relation between the input pairs and the outputs. And this I say is fully determinate, once we have decided what counts as input and output. If you then say that we can regard almost any aspect of the physical machine as an input or output then I say that Ross's argument also depends on deciding in advance what counts as input and output. If you then rest your case on this freedom to choose then I reply that Ross has added nothing with his use of Kripke. We have been here before.David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-36210843776340757642020-02-03T12:29:25.605-08:002020-02-03T12:29:25.605-08:00The emboldened claim is not mistaken. (Nor is Ed d...The emboldened claim is <i>not</i> mistaken. (Nor is Ed drawing any distinction between hardware and software.) I think you are getting too hung up on the particular example of quadding. Sure, given machine X with some particular Kripke-indeterminacy, it may be possible for you to build a different machine, Y, which does not suffer from that particular problem. That does not defeat Ross/Kripke/Feser, though — machine Y will have some <i>other</i> problem.<br /><br /><i>Maybe he intended to make a quuser but forgot to include the critical test on the magnitude of the inputs and ended up with a pluser. </i><br /><br />Yes, the “broken quus” function can implemented in <b>exactly the same way</b> as the “working plus” function. And the same way as infinitely many other possible functions. You can tell exactly what the machine is doing <i>physically</i>, but you cannot tell which <i>function</i> it is performing. (Or, if you insist, you can say it is performing infinitely many functions all at once.) That is the point of the argument: the <i>mechanism</i> is determinate, but the <i>functionality</i> is not. There is no one-to-one mapping between them. Any mechanism implements infinitely many functions, and any function can be implemented by infinitely many different machines. Therefore “functionality” and “mechanism” are two different things.<br />Mr. Greennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-67464352401100793782020-02-02T14:54:11.168-08:002020-02-02T14:54:11.168-08:00Well, let's take a closer look at what Ed says...Well, let's take a closer look at what Ed says. On page 16 in his account of Ross's argument we find,<br /><br /><i>Ross, again following Kripke, notes that there are no physical features of an adding machine, calculator, or computer that can determine whether it is carrying out addition or quaddition, no matter how far we extend its outputs. As Kripke emphasized, appealing to the intentions of the programmer will not solve the problem, because that just raises the question of whether the programmer really had addition or quaddition in mind, as in the original paradox. But Kripke makes a deeper point. No matter what the past behavior of a machine has been, we can always suppose that its next output—“5,” say, when calculating numbers larger than any it has calculated before—might show that it is carrying out something like quaddition rather than addition. Now it might be said in response that if this happens, that would just show that the machine was malfunctioning rather than performing quaddition. But Kripke points out that whether some output counts as a malfunction depends on what program the machine is running, and whether the machine is running the program for addition rather than quaddition is precisely what is in question. We might find out by asking the programmer, but <b>there is nothing in the physical properties of the machine itself that can tell us.</b></i><br /><br />The emboldened claim is mistaken. Ed follows Kripke in drawing a distinction between the physical machine---presumably some kind of stored program computer---and its program. Fair enough. <i>Program</i> sounds abstract and conceptual, <i>machine</i> sounds concrete and physical. But to turn the bare machine into an pluser or quuser the program has to be made concrete and physical as a pattern of charges loaded into the machine's memory cells. This distribution of charge forms part of the initial state of a prepared dynamical system governed by the laws of physics. Even if we are ignorant of the process of writing, compiling, and loading the program, this initial state can be recovered, and in combination with knowledge of the structure of the bare machine, we can tell whether the prepared machine will plus or quus. So there <i>is</i> something in the physical properties of the prepared machine that will tell us what it will do. What it doesn't give us is a determinate understanding of the programmer's intentions. Maybe he intended to make a quuser but forgot to include the critical test on the magnitude of the inputs and ended up with a pluser. <br />David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-15217405600737934802020-01-31T23:00:59.776-08:002020-01-31T23:00:59.776-08:00If your point is that Ross was misunderstanding so...If your point is that Ross was misunderstanding something, well, I dunno what was going on inside his head, and I have to admit that I don’t particularly care. I’m interested only in what the best version of the argument can show; and if Ross is unclear, that’s why Feser wrote his paper. And Feser <i>does</i> quite explicitly refer to meaning.Mr. Greennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-27515079486752214752020-01-30T14:11:39.867-08:002020-01-30T14:11:39.867-08:00Doesn't hold water was intended as a polite wa...<i>Doesn't hold water</i> was intended as a polite way of saying <i>is invalid</i>. I can make no sense of <i>additional</i> validity. You and I agree with Dillard that the machine is physically determinate. Ross appears to argue otherwise. His error, in my view, is to consider only histories of input output pairings and to ignore the possibility of investigating and understanding its physical structure. I don't think Ed has addressed this at all.<br /><br />I don't think Ross is about <i>meanings</i>. The word doesn't appear at all in <i>Immaterial Aspects of Thought.</i><br />David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-53325701457117348222020-01-28T15:54:02.131-08:002020-01-28T15:54:02.131-08:00>What I am trying to show is that the Ross/Fese...<i>>What I am trying to show is that the Ross/Feser argument for this conclusion doesn't hold water.</i><br /><br />You might be right that it doesn’t add anything — but that doesn’t mean the argument doesn’t hold water, merely that it doesn’t hold any <i>additional</i> water. The Ross/Feser version is a bit more complicated than it needs to be, that’s all. And if that’s true, Dillard’s objection is already refuted by the <i>simpler</i> version of the argument. You and Dillard are quite right that the machine is determinate in what it does <i>physically</i>; but nobody cares about that, because atoms can’t add (or schmultiply).<br /><br />We can get even simpler: forget the machines and look at some words printed on a page. What do the words mean? You cannot tell me. It’s indeterminate. Dillard can insist that he’s studied the page under a microscope and has a completely determinate, exhaustive description of the ink and wood-pulp. But he still can’t determine what the words mean. There are different things involved, at different levels, and it doesn’t matter how determinate things are a one level if they are still indeterminate at another.<br />Mr. Greennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-36496517984729477322020-01-28T04:38:29.246-08:002020-01-28T04:38:29.246-08:00Mr G, I think you misunderstand what I'm tryi...Mr G, I think you misunderstand what I'm trying to do here. I'm not attacking Ross's conclusion that mind is immaterial or whatever. For all I know this is right. Even less am I attacking Kripke in WRPL. What I am trying to show is that the Ross/Feser argument for this conclusion doesn't hold water. It doesn't give us any further justification for the conclusion than its predecessor arguments. <br /><br />In particular, Ed hasn't at all refuted Dillard with his Kripkean hammer. Kripke says that from the machine alone we can't infer its designer's intentions. Fine. How is this supposed to rebut Dillard's point (and my point) that machines can behave determinately?David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-41461551655615532962020-01-27T15:14:56.957-08:002020-01-27T15:14:56.957-08:00But I think it concedes too much to Ross to accept...<i>But I think it concedes too much to Ross to accept what appears to be his view that a material mind must work through analogues, either exact (Ross) or approximate (his opponent). </i><br /><br />I’m not sure what you mean by “analogues”. If you mean it in the sense that what is in the brain is analogous to the actual concept [the form, in the Aristotelian sense], then what alternative is there? It can’t <i>be</i> the concept [in the sense of the form’s being instantiated in matter], because concepts clearly are not physically instantiated inside anyone’s brain.<br /><br /><i>Whether a circuit is an and-gate depends solely on its behaviour which itself depends on its physical structure.</i><br /><i>[…] 1. There will have to be rules to be followed for setting up the inputs and interpreting the outputs and these will be susceptible to the sceptical attack.</i><br /><br />Right, this just brings us back to having to define what counts as an input, etc. The <b>physics</b> is determinate, but we can’t get from there to an equally determinate <i>meaning</i>.<br /><br /><i>2. The machine is finite and cannot perform additions on arbitrarily large numbers.</i><br /><br />I’m not sure how much this matters if the point is supposed to be a (somewhat functional/behavioural) approach where we are allowed only to use the machine from the outside (insofar as the machines are stand-ins for our minds, and we cannot crack open our minds to see how they work). But Kripke points out that a finite machine can, in fact, add arbitrarily large numbers; he also points out that this doesn’t work for multiplying. (His original example probably should have used schmultiplcation… oh, well.)<br /><br /><i>3. Machines malfunction. The hoped for stabilization is a mirage.</i><br /><i>And as far as we can tell our minds are far from perfect too.</i><br /><br />Sure, but the question isn’t whether we can ever get things wrong, but whether we can ever get things right. The argument is that matter-only could never do better than the accidental correctness of a stopped clock. (Indeed, on an Aristotelian view, our thinking can go wrong only because it’s tied to a physical brain. Angels cannot make mistakes.)<br /><br /><i>What appears to be indeterminate from the machine alone is the extended function the designer may have had in mind as he worked.</i><br /><br />Which is the only thing we care about (in this context). If the designer can’t get the extended function from his mind into the machine, then he can’t get it into his brain, either.<br />Mr. Greennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-64617949650600000872020-01-24T14:48:53.358-08:002020-01-24T14:48:53.358-08:00Kripke discusses machines on pages 32--35 of WRPL....Kripke discusses machines on pages 32--35 of WRPL. Machines come up because one anti-sceptical proposal for stabilizing an interpretation of 'plus' is to externalise it in the form of an adding machine. Kripke argues that this cannot defeat the sceptic. He says (p34) there are three problems.<br /><br />1. There will have to be rules to be followed for setting up the inputs and interpreting the outputs and these will be susceptible to the sceptical attack.<br /><br />2. The machine is finite and cannot perform additions on arbitrarily large numbers.<br /><br />3. Machines malfunction. The hoped for stabilization is a mirage.<br /><br />Problems (1) and (2) are not relevant to the question of the determinacy of a physical machine. Strictly speaking (2) is a non-sequitur. We can envisage a serial adding machine that receives the digits of the summands in pairs, least significant pair first, and outputs the corresponding digit of the sum, just as we were taught to add as children. Too much is made of problem (3). We are rather good at engineering machines that perform stably across the range of conditions found near the surface of the Earth, as is nature. And as far as we can tell our minds are far from perfect too. Most of them work for just two thirds of the time, some never get to work properly, and all seem subject to distraction and caprice and error, and all ultimately wear out.<br /><br />Regarding Ed's summary of 'Kripke's point' in the above quoted passage, what Kripke appears to say is (p34),<br /><br /><i>The machine as physical object is of value only if the intended function can somehow be read off from the physical object alone.</i><br /><br />This is in the context of problem (2) where<br /><br /><i>Indefinitely many programs extend the actual finite behaviour of the machine.</i> <br /><br />But what has this to do with the indeterminacy of the physical machine? The machine is quite determinate. What appears to be indeterminate from the machine alone is the extended function the designer may have had in mind as he worked. Sure, the intentions of the designer can only be guessed at, but what the machine actually does is a question of physics. Ed seems to think he can dismiss Dillard with a Kripkean thought taken out of context.David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-62103692803431958762020-01-22T14:11:04.511-08:002020-01-22T14:11:04.511-08:00Well, perhaps. But I think it concedes too much t...Well, perhaps. But I think it concedes too much to Ross to accept what appears to be his view that a material mind must work through analogues, either exact (Ross) or approximate (his opponent). <br /><br />I looked at Ed's ACPQ article. The nearest he comes to answering my objection is on page 21 where he says,<br /><br /><i>...Dillard says that there is a determinate difference between an and-gate, an or-gate, and other logic gates, which falsifies Ross’s claim that physical phenomena are inherently indeterminate. But this simply ignores Kripke’s point that whether a machine has certain computational properties—in this case, whether a given electrical circuit really instantiates an and-gate or is instead malfunctioning—is not something that can be read off from the physical properties of the circuit itself, but depends on the intentions of the designer.</i><br /><br />I'm not a trained philosopher so I don't have to be in awe of Kripke. Does he say this in so many words? My view is that this is diametrically wrong. Whether a circuit is an and-gate depends solely on its behaviour which itself depends on its physical structure. The intentions of the designer are irrelevant. After all, he may have wanted to build an or-gate but got the designs mixed up. But I'll look at the Kripke original.David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-26821524569977610772020-01-20T19:30:14.524-08:002020-01-20T19:30:14.524-08:00David, I think you might be right that the argumen...David, I think you might be right that the argument overall is equivalent to the general representation version. I don’t know whether Ross thought otherwise, or just that this was a particularly precise way to formulate the argument. Having pondered it bit, though, I think Ross’s version may have an advantage against someone who bites the bullet and admits that a brain can’t, say, determinately represent a perfect triangle — but claims that we don’t need our brains to do that, as long as we can get a “close enough” approximation. Ross doesn’t simply say, “Of course you can conceive of perfect triangularity”; he says, “If you can’t determinately perform functions, then you can’t do basic logic like <i>modus ponens</i>, so you don’t have an argument at all.”Mr. Greennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-7592477079694350582020-01-19T13:00:24.235-08:002020-01-19T13:00:24.235-08:00Further thoughts?Further thoughts?David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-40057101365481300732020-01-15T04:44:11.740-08:002020-01-15T04:44:11.740-08:00Yes. And in the set-theoretical picture of functi...Yes. And in the set-theoretical picture of functions the idea of one function being part of another or overlapping another can be made precise. <br /><br />There is a long standing argument that Ed has rehearsed several times to the effect that physical representations are indeterminate in themselves as to what they represent. This pushes us to the conclusion that mind is immaterial. It's a strong argument. There is an analogue to this in the present discussion: the calculating device in itself is indeterminate as to what it calculates. This too is a strong argument. Ross thinks that his Kripke inspired argument reveals a yet deeper level of indeterminacy in the physical. I have been arguing all along that he is mistaken in this. If I'm right then Ross's work doesn't add anything to the long standing indeterminacy of representation argument. He doesn't give us any <i>further</i> reason for thinking that mind must be immaterial. That is all. David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-17116893546121219902020-01-14T19:38:19.635-08:002020-01-14T19:38:19.635-08:00Thanks, David, I see what you mean now. Forget “in...Thanks, David, I see what you mean now. Forget “infinite” functions like addition and quaddition; consider instead the very “finite” function <i>potrzebie</i>, according to which 0•1 = 1, 1•0 = 1, and that’s it. Given suitable definitions for what counts as an input and an output, and as “0” and as “1”, we can build a machine that performs <i>exactly</i> that function. It also happens to overlap with <i>part of</i> addition (and quaddition, and infinitely many other possible functions); but it only exactly determines <i>potrzebie</i> (anything else exactly equivalent to that would just be <i>potrzebie</i> under a different name). Right?<br /><br />I don’t think this means Ross’s argument is wrong, although he could have been more explicit about the details. I think he is talking about inputs, etc. for convenience, as though we could simply help ourselves to these notions, just so he can discuss Kripke’s example on the same terms as Kripke does. The fact that even that much interpretation is beyond what can be physically determined just makes Ross’s argument that much stronger: even with that extra layer of interpretation given for free, there are still functions that cannot be realised determinately; all the moreso is it impossible to get any determinacy without that leg-up.<br /><br /><i>We can't open up our minds to look inside for evidence of their reliability.</i><br /><br />Again, this surely just helps Ross. Even if we could help ourselves to a free interpretation of inputs/outputs/etc., and even if we could take this interpretation and look inside our brains, we still couldn’t get the necessary determinacy. Even if, <i>per impossibile</i>, we could do all that, it still wouldn’t provide a way out because we do not in fact hold determinate thoughts in mind by means of cracking open our brains and checking their wiring first. <br />Mr. Greennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-69524628536273974112020-01-14T10:11:18.392-08:002020-01-14T10:11:18.392-08:00As quoted above:
Whatever the discriminable featu...As quoted above:<br /><br /><i>Whatever the discriminable features of a physical process may be, there will always be a pair of incompatible predicates, each as empirically adequate as the other, to name a function the <b>exhibited data</b> or process "satisfies."</i><br /><br />My bold. It's clear what counts as data has been decided. It's clear also that Ross is restricting himself to considering finite histories of inputs and outputs, just as Kripke does. But Kripke is talking about what we can know of our own minds. We can't open up our minds to look inside for evidence of their reliability. That's what pushes us towards a sceptical conclusion. But with an inanimate physical object we can do physics on what we find inside.David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-91152494089705929642020-01-14T09:08:05.019-08:002020-01-14T09:08:05.019-08:00Where is Ross saying that? And even if he did, how...Where is Ross saying that? And even if he did, how does that affect the argument?Mr. Greennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-72060621227897891162020-01-14T08:32:25.360-08:002020-01-14T08:32:25.360-08:00What part or aspect of the system counts as an inp...What part or aspect of the system counts as an input or output has to be decided by us in advance. I said this back at the start. Obviously, by choosing different parts we may find a different relation between input and output. So, yes, there is an indeterminacy here. But this applies to Ross too. He is saying, or so it seems to me, that even when what counts as an input or output is decided, and this indeterminacy is resolved, even then the relation between input and output is indeterminate. That, I think, is quite mistaken. So, contrary to what Ed and others aver, Ross's argument adds nothing new to compel us to the conclusion that mind is immaterial. David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.com