[lit-ideas] Re: view of names, or in ginocchio da te

  • From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2013 10:57:28 -0230

As is so often the case, Donal offers some interesting thoughts - even if
mistaken.

When my heart ceases to function properly, and I need a triple by-pass, is my
heart "making a mistake"? Moreover, to push Phil's conceptual analysis, do I
blame my heart for making a mistake? Should I punish or discipline it in some
way? Do I blame it for not learning its function properly/correctly? 

I can't see how the capacity to correct my mistakes is more
accurately/genuinely
a distinct criterion of human thought than the capacity to make mistakes. The
former capacity would seem to be possible only through piggy-backing on the
latter capacity. 

A quick note on Socrates for RP: I'm not sure that Socrates ever held a theory
of Forms in Plato's sense. His calls for examples do not in themselves show
that his epistemic procedure involved assessing an example's degree of
accordance with its original Form. I think that Socrates' dissatisfaction with
his interlocutors' provisions of examples was not that they failed the
Form-test but that the examples were part of a theory or account that was
itself incoherent or self-contradictory. I believe my muses here are Vlastos
and Friederikson, but of course I may be mistaken. But if so, at least you know
you're reading the thoughts of a human, the thoughts of a human, the thoughts of
a human .... Message and author will self-destruct in 15 seconds.

Walter O


Quoting Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>:

> 
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________
>  From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
> 
>  
> 
> 
> >Omar beat me to it. No reason why a machine [snip] can't be programmed to
> make mistakes.>
> 
> Correct: and its programme may also contain "mistakes" that have not been
> intentionally programmed in or of which the programmer is unaware: and,
> through physical dysfunction, it may even make a mistake contrary to its
> programme (if that programme were functioning properly on the computer).
> 
> So I agree that the capacity to make mistakes is not a sound basis for
> distinguishing humans from machines.
> 
> What may provide a basis is the capacity to correct mistakes - for humans may
> consciously correct errors without this correction being merely
> 'programmatic', whereas a computer cannot consciously correct its errors this
> way but can only correct its mistakes in so far as it has a programme to
> detect and correct those mistakes. 
> 
> Obviously this basis needs some arguing out.
> 
> My reply to Omar on physicalism as "empirical" is posted separately.
> 
> Donal
> London


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