Re: Folk Psychology and Social Convention

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Eray 
Ozkural  exa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
> Hi Neil and Anthony,
>
> Neil W Rickert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message 
> news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> > Anthony Bucci <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >
> > >Have you read Susan Oyama's book _The Ontogeny of Information_?  I
> > >recommend you have a look at it if not.  She talks about the same sort of
> > >intensional/extensional split you are discussing, but she traces it
> > >through a variety of fields like computer science and evolutionary
> > >biology.  In computer science, it shows up as the syntax/semantics split
> > >(for instance).
> >
> > The intensional/extensional distinction is quite different from the
> > syntax/semantics distinction.
>
> Let me try to clarify once again for those fellow readers who may have
> fallen prey to David Longley's philosophical mischief. The dictionary
> meanings of intensional and extensional are quite clear, and the
> distinction among them is nothing like the distinction between syntax
> and semantics in programming languages or natural languages. (This is
> an important point Anthony, please take note)
>
> You can take a look at the definitions of European Society of General
> Semantics: http://esgs.org//uk/inex.htm <--- In fact, this is the
> authoritative definition of the distinction.
>
> I also like this entry from FOLDOC.
>
> > From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (17 May 2003) [foldoc]:
>
>  extensional
>
>     Extensional properties, e.g. extensional equality, relate to
>     the "black-box" behaviour of an object, i.e. how its output
>     depends on its input.  The opposite is intensional which
>     concerns how the object is implemented.
>
> Syntax is *not* how the object is implemented, Anthony. Please.
>
> In fact, from a general point of view, Turing-computation is
> syntactic. (Remember Chomsky's language classes) Yet it holds
> semantics (and is in fact full of semantics and context), and this
> easy lemma is not something discovered by your lab. I really adore the
> work done in your lab, I fell in love with those evolved robot designs
> and the work on recurrent networks and evolutionary programming, but
> please make your claims compatible with the philosophical antecedents
> of what has been done. Discarding history has never been an ally of
> the good scientist.
>
> Yet, the syntax of natural language and programming languages are not
> Turing-complete generally. Rather, we could say that the "syntax of
> semantics" of those languages are Turing complete!!!
>
> Neil, by the way, do you know anybody has argued for or against that
> general Turing-complete syntax can give rise to semantics easily? What
> do you recommend on that subject?
>
> > >                 In evolutionary biology, it shows up as the belief that
> > >it's all in the genes (vs. the environment or the organism's development).
> >
> > The nature/nurture distinction is also different from the
> > intensional/extensional distinction.
>
> I'll have to agree with Neil. One must not forgo philosophical rigor
> when analyzing distinctions of such properties.
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Eray Ozkural <erayo at cs.bilkent.edu.tr>
> instill hope in the trans-human!!!
> instill hope in us!!!

What Eray fails to grasp is 1) the intensional is problematic, 2) the 
important message of the ESGS definition, 3) the centrality of this 
matter to contemporary philosophy of mind and the philosophy of AI and 
4) what this thread (and others) is really all about.

I don't say this lightly - it can be seen by what he says and how he 
says it, not only with respect to the intension-extension distinction, 
but in almost everything else he says outside his own field (and I'm not 
really sure what that is)..

This awkward situation has arisen with a number of people who fail to 
see that their grasp of something, (ie what they *believe* or *think*) 
may be "false". At times this is defended along the lines of everyone 
has their own point of view, "interpretation" or "opinion" - which is a 
little odd as we don't do this when we teach science. Sometimes it seems 
to be a consequence of poor teaching or worse, where they what they have 
read is just false and they go on to *faithfully* re-present it!  But 
there *is* a way, perhaps a limited way, in which one *can* be right - 
if only one is careful how one uses the notion of "truth". We have seen 
plenty of examples where errors have been made in such contexts and the 
error has been spotted, corrected, and the individual has acknowledged 
the mistake and learned from it - how else does one learn?

    Word and Object (1960)
    Pursuit of Truth (1992)
    From Stimulus to Science (1995)

Note: "Inter-disciplinarianism" (e.g. Cognitive Science and 
Neuroscience) has it's merits, but in many ways, the pitfalls far 
outweigh the merits. One of these is that one ends up with people with 
degrees and research skills in very specialised fields suddenly 
espousing authoritative views in fields in which they have absolutely no 
expertise or training, and then resenting being corrected (because they 
have "degrees" no doubt) when they are picked up on these transgressions 
by those who do have expertise. I appreciate that there is a fine line 
sometimes, but the errors I am referring to are well known - there is 
room for disagreement, but not like this.

We now have a burgeoning popular press which both generates and caters 
for popular demand (such is the nature of "marketing"), and much of this 
"literature" is written/tailored by professionals, (sometimes Nobel 
Laureates), who thereby reinforce this egregious behaviour. Sadly, it 
isn't *professional* at all (cf. "Fragments" on context specificity).


--
David Longley