6 ideas
| 20921 | How can we state relativism of sweet and sour, if they have no determinate nature? [Theophrastus] |
| Full Idea: How could what is bitter for us be sweet and sour for others, if there is not some determinate nature for them? | |
| From: Theophrastus (On the Senses [c.321 BCE], 70) | |
| A reaction: The remark is aimed at Democritus. This is part of the general question of how you can even talk about relativism, without attaching stable meanings to the concepts employed. |
| 3193 | Turing showed that logical rules can be specified computationally and mechanically [Turing, by Rey] |
| Full Idea: Turing showed that any formal process can be specified computationally, and captured by a Turing Machine. Hence logical rules (and arithmetic) could be obeyed not by someone representing and following them, but by causal organisation of the brain. | |
| From: report of Alan Turing (works [1935]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 8.2 | |
| A reaction: It is questionable whether logic is an entirely formal process, if it involves truth. You would need an entirely formal notion of truth for that. But a brain can do whatever a flow diagram can do. |
| 3979 | The Turing Machine is the best idea yet about how the mind works [Fodor on Turing] |
| Full Idea: Alan Turing had (in his theory of the 'Turing Machine') what I suppose is the best thought about how the mind works that anyone has had so far. | |
| From: comment on Alan Turing (Computing Machinery and Intelligence [1950]) by Jerry A. Fodor - Jerry A. Fodor on himself p.296 | |
| A reaction: I am not convinced, because I don't think rationality is possible without consciousness. The brain may bypass the representations used by a computer. |
| 5321 | In 50 years computers will successfully imitate humans with a 70% success rate [Turing] |
| Full Idea: In about fifty years' time it will be possible to program computers to play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70% chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning. | |
| From: Alan Turing (Computing Machinery and Intelligence [1950], p.57), quoted by Robert Kirk - Mind and Body §5.9 | |
| A reaction: This is the famous prophecy called 'The Turing Test'. The current state (2004) seems to be that the figure of 70% is very near, but no one sees much prospect of advancing much further in the next 100 years. Dennett sees jokes as a big problem. |
| 5990 | Theophrastus doubted whether nature could be explained teleologically [Theophrastus, by Gottschalk] |
| Full Idea: Theophrastus questioned Aristotle's teaching on the extent to which teleological explanations could be applied to the natural world. | |
| From: report of Theophrastus (On Metaphysics (frags) [c.320 BCE]) by H.B. Gottschalk - Aristotelianism | |
| A reaction: It is interesting to see that Aristotle's own immediate successor had doubts about teleology. We usually assume that the ancients were teleological, and this was rejected in the seventeenth century (e.g. Idea 4826). |
| 651 | Eurytus showed that numbers underlie things by making pictures of creatures out of pebbles [Eurytus, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Eurytus assigned numbers to things by taking some pebbles and using them to create likeness of the shapes of living things, such as a man or a horse. | |
| From: report of Eurytus (fragments/reports [c.400 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1092b | |
| A reaction: Pythagorean. Digitising reality. |