Re: Turing Machines and Physical Computation

From: JXStern (JXSternChangeX2R_at_gte.net)
Date: 11/28/04 

Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 20:20:28 GMT

On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 18:50:21 +0000 (UTC), Neil W Rickert
<rickert+nn@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>>OK, I passed on the hard question, what is the "subject" of the number
>>three? Well, lots of smart people have expended a lot of hot air on
>>that topic. Is there a three-ness, abstract or concrete, which is the
>>subject of the symbol 3 as it is commonly used? I don't know.
>
>I would think that a "three-ness", if you believe in such things,
>should count as an essence. Yet you have stated that you reject
>essentialism.

Well, I don't know that it's an essence, but the odds are it is, and
that I would reject it, if I had an opinion, but the point is I don't
think I have to care.

>But this seems to require something like platonism. As a nominalist,
>I had presumed that you denied that there were numbers, and allowed
>only numerals. Personally, I allow the number 3 to exist, but only
>as a convenient fiction. This is weaker than platonism, but perhaps
>a little stronger than what I took to be the nominalist view.

In *my* nominalism, convenient fictions abound, at least as strings.
I suppose, strictly speaking, no fictions as such abound, nor any
truths.

>>I want to dogmatically deny that. Now, let's see if I can. Some
>>genius works out in the abstract that 2+2=4.
>
>That's a poor example. Instead, consider the quadratic formula,
>
> [ -b +- sqrt(b^2 -4ac)] / 2a
>
>Here the symbols "a", "b" and "c" have no subject, and the usefulness
>of the formula (i.e. its generality) depends on them having no
>subject.

No subject, no use, no interest, and your "generality" is an illusion.
If it hadn't already been proven particularly, nobody would pretend to
the generality. I suggest what you see here is *repeatability*, not
generality, and that is a very different thing, pretty nearly sui
generis to computation.

>>>We can predict and control our computers to very high degrees of
>>>accuracy. The idea that we are lacking an explanation seems
>>>confused. If philosophy has difficulty accounting for computers,
>>>that only reflects on the inadequacies of philosophy.
>
>>Show me a computational AI at work, and I'll grant your point.
>
>That seems to be non-relevant. I agree that we are lacking an
>explanation of intelligence. And a working computational AI system
>might help fill that gap. But the lack of explanation is not in
>either computation or in computers.

The putative difficulty in writing effective software is a more common
and mundane version of the same thing, IMHO.

It's an interesting point that, after thirty years of moaning about
the difficulty and cost of writing software, you tend not to hear that
complaint anymore. Perhaps now that it's all done in Bangalore,
nobody in the states much cares. More likely, I think there is an
actual change in opinion these days among those who commission and use
software, they have grown to expect it to be crufty and that they will
have to live with various imperfections. I count this as a new
maturity, if true, with theoretical implications - partial, arbitrary
systems are now seen, properly, as what computation is all about.

Comments?

>>>Perhaps the concept of "computation" seems elusive, but the
>>>computers themselves should present no problems.
>
>>I've used the metaphor before, but people made fire for years without
>>really understanding heat and energy and oxidation and such, but if
>>you want to build fancy, complex systems, you really do need such
>>science.
>
>However, people could neither control nor predict fire very well.

Enough that people counted themselves better than chimps.

>I don't think that a useful analogy for "computation".
>
>> We're at the rubbing two sticks together stage still in
>>computation, and I look to philosophy as the missing element -
>
>Sorry, but I disagree.
>
>> In the area of computation, language, and
>>cognition, I think the discipline will always be more philosophical
>>than deductive. Tune in in fifty years and see if I'm right.
>
>You might be right about language and cognition. But you are wrong
>about computation.

Two out of three ain't bad, but I'm still hopeful.

J.

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