[Wittrs] Re: Nominalism / Sean
- From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 5 Sep 2009 08:32:55 -0700 (PDT)
... where did you reply from? Was it Google or Yahoo archives? Or direct email.
I saw one of your replies to Josh. Could you send the mail to me if you have it?
Regards.
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Redesigned Website: http://seanwilson.org
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New Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html
________________________________
From: iro3isdx <xznwrjnk-evca@xxxxxxxxx>
To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2009 11:19:40 AM
Subject: [Wittrs] Re: Nominalism / Sean
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "jrstern" <jrstern@...> wrote:
I replied to Josh yesterday. My reply still has not appeared. I'm not sure if
this is Yahoo brokenness, or whether some of the changes that Sean has been
making are blocking my method of posting.
Here, I'll just comment on a parts I ignored in the earlier reply. I'll decide
later whether to repost that reply.
> But I'm working on finding what one can do in and around
> computational theories. That's my mission statement. Preliminary
> work looks to me very promising. And frankly, looking around at
> other parts of philosophy, nothing else looks promising to me at all.
Nothing in philosophy looks promising. Honestly, philosophy is a vast
wasteland. Okay, I borrowed that phrase from Newton Minow, who was applying it
to TV. But at least TV has an excuse. It is, after all, merely an entertainment
medium for the masses. However, in philosophy you find some very intelligent
people. Yet it is still a vast wasteland.
> The "naturalizing" projects worked pretty well for the natural
> (!) sciences over the past century or two, and I think we really
> just need more of the same in computation, and the computational
> theories of mind, that we have courtesy of Wittgenstein, Turing,
> and McCarthy/Minsky/Chomsky/Newell and Simon/Fodor/Dennett/Schank
> et al.
If you want to "naturalize" computation, wouldn't it be a good idea to at least
find some natural examples of computation. I am not convinced that any exist,
except to the extent that human activity can be considered natural. Sure, some
people say that the brain is doing computation. But, as far as I can tell, the
only evidence they have is that signals are being sent down neural lines. Your
automobile has signals sent down lines (to energize the spark plugs, for
example), but few would claim that as computation.
While googling to find out more about Wittgenstein's theory of mind, I came
across this page, apparently due to Jack Copeland.
Regards,
Neil
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