3 ideas
| 3178 | 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. |
| 20930 | The existence of law is one thing, its merits and demerits another [Austin,J] |
| Full Idea: The existence of law is one thing; its merit and demerit another. Whether it be or be not is one enquiry; whether it be or be not conformable to an assumed standard is a different enquiry. | |
| From: John Austin (Lectures on Jurisprudence [1858], p.214), quoted by Jens Zimmermann - Hermeneutics: a very short introduction 6 'Positivism' | |
| A reaction: It is impossible to contest this point, but the issue is whether there is nothing more to law than its written existence. |
| 14409 | I am a presentist, and all language and common sense supports my view [Bigelow] |
| Full Idea: I am a presentist: nothing exists which is not present. Everyone believed this until the nineteenth century; it is writing into the grammar of natural languages; it is still assumed in everyday life, even by philosophers who deny it. | |
| From: John Bigelow (Presentism and Properties [1996], p.36), quoted by Trenton Merricks - Truth and Ontology | |
| A reaction: The most likely deniers of presentism seem to be physicists and cosmologists who have overdosed on Einstein. On the whole I vote for presentism, but what justifies truths about the past and future. Traces existing in the present? |