Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'On the Principles of Indiscernibles', 'works' and 'Hat-Tricks and Heaps'

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3 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / L. Paradox / 6. Paradoxes in Language / b. The Heap paradox ('Sorites')
The smallest heap has four objects: three on the bottom, one on the top [Hart,WD, by Sorensen]
     Full Idea: Hart argues that the smallest heap consists of four objects: three on the bottom, one on the top.
     From: report of William D. Hart (Hat-Tricks and Heaps [1992]) by Roy Sorensen - Vagueness and Contradiction Intro
     A reaction: If the objects were rough bolders, you could get away with two on the bottom. He's wrong. No one would accept as a 'heap' four minute grains barely visible to the naked eye. No one would describe such a group of items in a supermarket as a heap.
18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 6. Artificial Thought / c. Turing Test
A fast machine could pass all behavioural tests with a vast lookup table [Block, by Rey]
     Full Idea: Ned Block proposes a machine (a 'blockhead') which could pass the Turing Test just by looking up responses in a vast look-up table.
     From: report of Ned Block (works [1984]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 5.3
     A reaction: Once you suspected you were talking to a blockhead, I think you could catch it out in a Turing Test. How can the lookup table keep up to date with immediate experience? Ask it about your new poem.
28. God / B. Proving God / 2. Proofs of Reason / a. Ontological Proof
The concept of an existing thing must contain more than the concept of a non-existing thing [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: There must be more in the concept of a thing which exists than in that of one which does not exist.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (On the Principles of Indiscernibles [1696], p.134)