5 ideas
| 15585 | Later Heidegger sees philosophy as more like poetry than like science [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: In his later work Heidegger came to view philosophy as closer to poetry than to science. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (The Origin of the Work of Art [1935], p.178) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 5 'Signs' |
| 7334 | Anti-realism needs an intuitionist logic with no law of excluded middle [Dummett, by Miller,A] |
| Full Idea: Dummett argues that antirealism implies that classical logic must be given up in favour of some form of intuitionistic logic that does not have the law of excluded middle as a theorem. | |
| From: report of Michael Dummett (works [1970]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 9.4 | |
| A reaction: Only realists can think every proposition is either true or false, even if it is beyond the bounds of our possible knowledge (e.g. tiny details from remote history). Personally I think "Plato had brown eyes" is either true or false. |
| 3303 | For anti-realists there are no natural distinctions between objects [Dummett, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Dummett says that anti-realism offers us a picture of reality as an amorphous lump not yet articulated into discrete objects. | |
| From: report of Michael Dummett (works [1970]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This might be called 'weak' anti-realism, where 'strong' anti-realism is the view that reality is quite unknowable, and possibly non-existent. |
| 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. |