DanielCC wrote:

 
Now imagine if but half the time spent watching and reading about this was instead employed reading Brian Leftow's God and Necessity (now out in paperback). Just imagine it.
 

Why do you recommend this book?

I get the impression that most of the members here are right wing?

ccmnxc wrote:

Sorry for the post-and-run earlier. Hopefully we can dive back in. One caveat though: for some reason, I've been mulling over your response and am struggling to comprehend it, so this will for now be a request for some clarification, as I am having trouble stringing some of the ideas together.

Heh, I think I'm getting in over my head here, so would it be possible to dumb this down a bit? What is it that makes the input-output pairs in this causal analysis and addition inputs and outputs different? Further, when you say calculators don't work for all input-output pairs, is this for all possible physical inputs-outputs or only those that would fall under the process that calculator set for addition? 

Just on this part, the input-output pair for calculators cannot be the same as the input-output pairs for addition because addition is defined as the sum of any two numbers up to infinity. But we know that a calculator only has a finite lifetime so it cannot realize the full addition function.


 

Greg wrote:

z10 wrote:

he simple circuit does implement the identity function from input to output because the physical circuit is so simple that a counterfactual situation, knowing just the facts of the circuit alone, will never yield a breakdown on the 58th pulse but 58 pulses as output. The actual break down then is just the physical limitations of the shoddy capacitor and not an issue with the formally determinate function it is implementing.

I haven't read the paper, but my guess is that Kripke would think this sort of case subsumbed under his response to the "dispositionalist" (the person who replies to the skeptic by saying that you were adding in the past because you had the disposition to response with sums, not with "quums").

Though that seems like an obvious response, if Stabler appeals to a counterfactual--so perhaps he anticipates it.

Indeed he does anticipate it - he doesn't appeal to the counterfactual on dispositional grounds but on physical grounds. If we have two physically identical capacitors that stop working at different times then how could we say that the manufacturers had different intentions? They didn't construct different capacitors after all - so the intentions must have been the same and the difference is just one of physical makeup rather than the formal function the manufacturer intended.

iwpoe wrote:

I mean, I think they can group certain shapes automatically, but I'm not sure how much bite your objection has. The point will be made that no "concept" or "universal" was necessary to perform the task, which undercuts that series of objections to a computer centered theory of mind.

Now, yes, the computer can't reflect on its own task, but I'm not sure that's an in principal objection rather than one against present technology.

I think I would be tempted to deny that any task has been performed at all without an intentional subject to recognise a task. Does air perform the task of being lighter than water? I'm not sure I follow what distinguishes the neural network from this example if no subjects are around. Perhaps I'm missing the argument here!