Re: Robot Evolution
- From: "John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2006 00:32:30 -0500 (EST)
"Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@xxxxxxxx>
[moderator's note: As entertaining as you two apparently find
this slanging match to be, it remains nothing more than that.
Please say something substantive now and then, or else take it
to email. - JAH]
JE:-
Josh,
I am simply defending my right to PROPOSE and TEST EMPIRICALLY that machines
remain utterly mindless because they have to import their most inductive
inferences from human thinking. Kent Paul Dolan's arguments against this
proposition have been littered with evasion, invective and rhetoric. I
reserve the right to challenge the legitimacy of such when employed in what
is supposed to be a scientific discourse.
snip rhetoric<
Dear oh dear...I never claimed that the statement
was "incorrect".
All I asked for was a CLARIFICATION which was
subsequently supplied.
snip invective<
that is _not_ all you did, and you
merely document, yet again, your intellectual
dishonesty by claiming so.
JE:-
The above is more rhetorical nonsense (see repost below).
If that were all you did, your posting would have
ended there.
Strangely enough, it did not.
I refer you, and anyone following along doubting
that you behaved this intellectually dishonestly,
back to your own posting.
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.bio.evolution/msg/0380abfccee63a9d
JE:-
Here is a copy of the above showing the dialog between Kurt and myself:
----------------------------- start copy --------------------------------
An elementary, if widespread, confusion. Gödel's incompleteness
theorem (or, rather, Rosser's strenghtening of it), which is a
mathematical theorem no more and no less doubtful than, say, the
infinitude of primes, only tells us that given a formal theory T, there
exists, constructible by a mechanical procedure, a sentence G_T, such
that G_T is true and unprovable in T just in case T is consistent. The
only cases we can "see" that G_T is true are those in which we are
able, for whatever reasons, to see that T is consistent. For some
theories T we can indeed "see" this, in the sense of having perfectly
good reasons to conclude that T is consistent, and for some other T we
just don't have the slightest idea whether T is consistent. Consider,
for example, the theory K ) Peano airthmetic + Goldbach's conjecture.
JE:-
Since this is a science group and not a mathematics group explaining this
example in more detail would help. What appears to be your most important
statement: " ..there exists, constructible by a mechanical procedure, a
sentence G_T, such that G_T is true and unprovable in T just in case T is
consistent" does not make sense to me. I cannot fathom: "...just in case T
is consistent".
It seems to me that what you are stating is that mathematics is not real
(remains NON empirically based). Unfortunately, mathematics has to get real
(become empirically based) because human thinking remains entirely based on
_testable_ theories of nature. Mathematics is required to import assumed
constants of nature just to be able to break out of any of the enormous
number of abstract tautological assumptions (circular arguments such as
axioms, definitions of equality etc) which dominate mathematics.
Mathematical tautologies (which are not valid theories) do not exist in
isolation to non tautologous assumptions (which alone can be regarded as
valid theories). This is because without exception, all tautologous
assumptions have to be deduced from non tautologies. Mathematical circular
arguments can only exist as a deduction from NON tautologous assumptions all
of which are EMPIRICAL, i.e. all non tautologies remain outside of
mathematics. Only an identified empirical non tautology can possibly remove
mathematical incompleteness by introducing into mathematics an empirically
testable frame of reference from which all the circular arguments assumed
within mathematics can be deduced.
---------------------------- end copy --------------------------------------
What you _did_ there, for 17 lines as my browser
shows it, was to go on arguing, on the premise that
what you failed to understand _must be_ false, a lot
of counterfactual conclusions based on that
counterfactual premise.
JE:-
Dear oh dear...
After I requested these two clarifications from Kurt (he provide just one of
them), the remainder of what I wrote started with "It seems to me...". If
you ask for clarification about something this does not mean that you must
be have no understanding, just a false understanding or even a correct
understanding. It means you have YOUR OWN understanding which may differ.
The truth or falsity of my own, or anybody else's understanding _entirely_
depends on unbiased _empirical testing_ within the SCIENCES.
snip even more invective<
The intellectually honest approach, which I'll
explain here to you in detail as you apparently have
no idea of what such an approach might consist,
would have been, when you found yourself in a state
of confusion due to your lack of mathematical
sophistication sufficient to comprehend what you
were told, to take the statements as given to you
about Goedel's proof, by someone obviously much more
mathematically competent than you are, as CORRECT,
while you waited for clarification on the parts you
failed to understand, and otherwise to HOLD YOUR
PEACE on the issues.
JE:-
The above is simply, wrong. I have the right to make up
my own mind, just as you have the right to make up your
own mind, on any of the above matters within a free society.
The truth or falsity of any of these is entirely a different matter.
The fact that I may be wrong and you may be right, vice versa,
or neither of us are correct, depends entirely on unbiased _empirical
testing_ within the sciences. If what was being disputed cannot be
empirically tested then the matter cannot be resolved. In this case,
each and every refutable opinion remains valid, no matter who attempts
to apply a false argument from authority.
snip more rhetorical accusations<
You complain, frequently, about your intellectual
dishonesty being met with mere "rhetoric".
JE:-
No, I claimed that critical tests were being evaded proving a
Critical lack of integrity by evaders. In this particular case I
claim your accusations of dishonesty were merely rhetorical
because the simple truth of this matter is it that you have evaded
testing your proposed induction machine (see below).
snip even more rhetoric<
This dispute can easily be settled using APPLIED REASON:
Simply DO WHAT YOU CLAIM TO BE ABLE TO DO: actually provide the _induction_
which allowed Darwin and Wallace to independently invent exactly the same
theory of evolution by natural selection by only using your mechanical
induction machine (which you outlined here). Evading such a simple and
obvious test of your outlandish claim will prove your position remains
_untenable_.
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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