RE: What Computationalism is and what it is *not*

From: Lee Corbin <lcorbin.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 17:15:19 -0700

John writes

> > "Computationalism" is yet another claim.
> > It's the notion that all of our own
> > thoughts as well could be implemented
> > on a Turing Machine in a way that would
> > deliver to us just as much
> > experiential satisfaction.
>
> According to Robert Rosen (who so far identified in
> the best ways those scanty views about his
> 'complexity' or my 'wholistic [holistic] thinking')
> said about a
> difference between machine and natural system (my
> wording) that the former is a design within boundaries
> while the latter is occurring without boundaries in
> connection with the totality - and eo ipso is not
> TM-computable.

I can't make sense of that. After all, the famous
"Eliza" program was according to this view a machine,
of course. It was a specific program. But it was
also what you, evidently, would call a natural
system because it was open to output from anyone.
No effort was made to "program in" every possible
response just as evolution makes no effort to
"program in" to our DNA every possible contingency.

A TM which can be laid down on *any possible* tape
is analogous to a functioning robot that can be
presented with any possible environment in which
to struggle. And just as the TM may fail to perform
in some wished-for way, so too the robot, like
ourselves, may simply be inadequate to its new
environment. That's life.

Lee
Received on Wed Sep 07 2005 - 20:15:29 PDT