Re: Distinct linear orderings on Z

From: Jesse F. Hughes (jesse_at_phiwumbda.org)
Date: 03/24/05 

Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 19:38:18 +0100

stevendaryl3016@yahoo.com (Daryl McCullough) writes:

> Jesse F. Hughes says...
>
>>Suppose I came into your philosophy of mind discussion and proclaimed
>>that if you think I'm a Turing machine, you're just wrong, because
>>what Turing machine can recite Lewis Carroll? Then, when you
>>patiently explained that the fact that I can recite Lewis Carroll
>>doesn't refute the computational theory of mind, I might respond,
>>yeah, but I have free will and TMs don't and when pressed about how I
>>am sure I have free will, I merely say "introspection".
>
> Jesse, that's *exactly* what philosophy of mind discussions are like.
> (And you thought you were creating a parody...)

Well, not all of them, but I do wager that anyone that hangs out in a
philosophy of AI newsgroup has seen more than his share of cranks.

What is surprising is that they can't recognize their own crankish
behavior here.

There is an unfortunate and often deserved reputation about
philosophers being quick to tell folks that they're doing it all
wrong, no matter what it is and no matter how little the philosopher
knows the subject. Of course, this is not how philosophy ought to be
done, but it sadly is how its often done.

Lately, we've seen this. A group of "philosophers" claim that
cardinality is a bad measure of set size on the grounds that it
conflicts with their untrained intuitions. That their untrained
intuitions veer between obvious contradictions and utter incoherence
apparently doesn't matter. No, instead mathematicians should have the
humility to defer to the so-called philosophers.

I don't mean this as a wide criticism of philosophy. After all, I
am in a philosophy department. But real philosophy of mathematics
does not proceed thus. 

-- 
"Now I realize that he got away with all of that because sci.math is
not important, and the rest of the world doesn't pay attention.
Like, no one is worried about football players reading sci.math
postings!" -- James S. Harris on jock reading habits

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