Re: SUO: Re: Logic & Programming Languages
Seth wrote:
> > You do some
> > reasoning (very quickly) that leads to beliefs that, together with your
> > desires (not to be tiger lunch, for example), lead to action.
>
> Your assumption seems to be (=> (and (belief a b) (desire b c)) (action
> flee)).
Well, I'm not sure what a, b, and c here are, but I do think it is
plausible (though I'm certainly willing to be convinced otherwise) that
there is some sort of (typically unconscious) inference from beliefs
about one's environment and one's relevant desires to what one ought to
do in a context to satisfy those desires. Of course, such inferences
alone do not explain action -- it is always possible to know what one
ought to do and still not do it. The point is only that there is
(plausibly) some reasoning component essentially involved in action.
> I am just saying there is no such implication. The action is not
> triggered by such a structure, however coded.
Again, I would agree that such inferences alone are not sufficient to
explain action, only that they are (at least typically) a component.
> The action is triggered by a different process having to do with the
> nature of triggering actions, and not with the nature of beliefs and
> desires.
Beliefs and desires have to entire the picture in order to explain why
one action rather than another is triggered.
> Thinking yourself into action, however reasonable your beliefs, never
> works.
I can't agree or disagree, since I don't know what you mean by "thinking
yourself into action."
> Just doing it, does.
If by this you are dissociating action from belief and desire, what you
say is wildly implausible.
> I suspect that actions and their triggers, and beliefs and their
> reasons are manifested by different parts of our brains; and have very
> little if anything to do with each other.
I'm not sure if you are referring to the connectedness of brain
functions -- in which case what you say is a matter for empirical
investigation -- or the connectedness of belief and desire with action,
in which case, again, what you say is intuitively false.
> > Granted, the inferential component no doubt becomes less prominent with
> > regard to habitual behavior, but reasoning will arguably still be
> > involved -- one needs at least to belief one is in the sort of situation
> > where a certain habitual response can kick in.
>
> Well yes, one needs to recognize that one is in a situation before the
> situation can trigger the behavior. But the recognition does not need
> to be conscious.
I never suggested it need be either.
> My thesis is that the conscious part of the recognition is
> irrelevant to the actual action.
Oh, I didn't think consciousness was at issue here. Maybe we aren't
disagreeing over much (at this point).
> > > I think logic is a game of rules for describing what happens after the
> > > fact.
> >
> > Hm, where to start. Do you mean that we arrived at our logical "laws"
> > simply by obvserving how people reason?
>
> No, logicians work out these 'laws' with pencil and paper.
I suppose in the same way that physicists work out physical laws with
pencil and paper.
> >And, exactly who made up this game, and when?
>
> Well shucks it started with Aristotle, didn't it?
He was the first to systematize patterns of inference. But to suggest
he made them up -- in a way that implies he was free to make up other
principles than the ones he did -- is just silly.
> He made a big mistake too ...
> http://robustai.net/ai/notnota.htm
I found this incomprehensible. (Your x in the second figure is
obviously not in A. Why are you even suggesting there is some sort of
puzzle there?)
Excluded middle is certainly a deep issue in philosophical logic. It
arises out of competing views about the nature of truth, most
prominently in the debate between classical and intuitionist logicians,
or more generally between realists and anti-realists. The literature is
voluminous. I'd be happy to share some references. Because of this
dispute, excluded middle is always the principle that, er, nonspecialists
like to hold up as an example of how logic is "conventional" or made up
-- a view no one on either side of the real debate would ever agree to.
(Try giving up, e.g., noncontradiction instead).
> >And why is it so hard to change the rules?
>
> I think it has something to do with the way professors are tenured.
Ah, clever humor -- last resort of those bereft of argument.
Cheers!
-chris
--
Christopher Menzel # web: philebus.tamu.edu/~cmenzel
Philosophy, Texas A&M University # net: chris.menzel@tamu.edu
College Station, TX 77843-4237 # vox: (979) 845-8764