From: andersw+@pitt.edu (Anders N Weinstein)
Date: 16 Nov 1996 21:54:07 GMT
Organization: University of Pittsburgh

In article <328CF725.40D1@postoffice.worldnet.att.net>,
kenneth paul collins   wrote:
>Anders N Weinstein wrote:
>> 
>> Right, but it's irrelevant.
>
>It's hardly "irrelevant". The question includes stuff like the existence of 
>God and  "quantum uncertainty".

Oooh. Big questions.

>> Determinism at the physical level does not entail that there is any
>> interesting *computational* level.
>
>I disagree. Every "atom" interacts with its "neighbors" (and with the rest of 
>the Universe), and that interaction is computed in rigorous accord with What's 
>Described By 2nd Thermo (WDB2T) - literally. The so-called "random" motions of 
>"atoms" is not random at all. All such motion is rigorously computed by WDB2T.

Atoms do not compute anything, since they don't have representations. 
Their behavior might (or might not) be described by deterministic laws, but
again that is irrelevant, or else you could just explain human behavior
at the physical level and claim to have a cognitive theory. 

>> Which might well not be a useful higher-level functional explanation of 
>> human brains, even if determininism obtains at the physical level of their 
>> constituents.
>
>Rock or CPU or brain, it's all WDB2T. What you're missing is that WDB2T is 
>some Truely-awesome Stuff.

That's as may be, still not everything is a computer, only some things.

>Dealing with things in terms of "representational vehicles" facilitates 
>communication, but has only interface correlation with cognitive processes. 
>The first thing our nervous systems do with "representational vehicles" 
>is to transform them into input interface perturbations, and from there until 
>the production of output interface purturbations, it's all straight WDB2T.

Then you reject the idea of a cognitive science in favor of a purely
physical explanation.

>"Representational vehicles" are like "tools" - inanimate implements, that, in 
>the absence of dynamics conforming to WDB2T, are indistinguishable from the 
>"rock" to which you referred earlier. It is WDB2T which animates everything 
>within Physical Reality. Anything that is not WDB2T not only does not compute, 
>but is completely =static=. ken collins

What animates them is rational dynamics, not physical dynamics, conformity
to the normative laws of thought.