From owner-cse584-sp07-list@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Fri Jan 26 08:23:45 2007 for ; Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:23:45 -0500 (EST) for ; Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:23:41 -0500 (EST) 08:23:33 -0500 Delivered-To: CSE584-SP07-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU X-Originating-IP: 72.88.70.223 X-UB-Relay: (internal) X-PM-EL-Spam-Prob: X: 18% Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:23:32 -0500 Reply-To: nhj@BUFFALO.EDU From: Nicolas Jackson Subject: Re: SHAPIRO AND PROCEEDURES To: CSE584-SP07-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU List-Help: , List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Owner: List-Archive: X-UB-Relay: (deliverance.acsu.buffalo.edu) X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.2 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.7 (2006-10-05) on ares.cse.buffalo.edu X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.88.6/2493/Fri Jan 26 07:00:46 2007 on ares.cse.buffalo.edu X-Virus-Status: Clean A student writes: || He also || states that if animals are mechanistic then a computer can do what an || animal can do (i.e. a further implication of the Church-Turing thesis). Professor Rapaport answers: |That depends on what "mechanistic" means. If it means "computational", |then this is correct. But if it means something like "mechanical" |(think of gears, levers, and pulleys), then maybe not. I say: I thought what was meant by mechanistic was, to some extent at least, mechanical. Computing machines can be made out of gears, levers, and pulleys, though they are not as powerful as conventional computers and take up a lot more space. A computer can do anything a mechanism can because anything a mechanism does can be described in terms of sequences, selections, and loops. This is particularly obvious when one bears in mind computers with sensors and articulators as Professor Shapiro describes in the paper. Nicolas Jackson From owner-cse584-sp07-list@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Fri Jan 26 08:57:03 2007 for ; Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:57:03 -0500 (EST) for ; Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:56:59 -0500 (EST) 08:56:49 -0500 Delivered-To: CSE584-SP07-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU for ; Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:56:48 -0500 (EST) CSE584-SP07-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU; Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:56:48 -0500 (EST) X-UB-Relay: (castor.cse.buffalo.edu) X-PM-EL-Spam-Prob: : 7% Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:56:48 -0500 Reply-To: "William J. Rapaport" From: "William J. Rapaport" Subject: Re: SHAPIRO AND PROCEEDURES To: CSE584-SP07-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU List-Help: , List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Owner: List-Archive: X-UB-Relay: (castor.cse.buffalo.edu) X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.5 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.7 (2006-10-05) on ares.cse.buffalo.edu X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.88.6/2493/Fri Jan 26 07:00:46 2007 on ares.cse.buffalo.edu X-Virus-Status: Clean Nicholas Jackson writes: | I thought what was meant by mechanistic was, to some extent at least, | mechanical. I think that what computer scientists and computationally-oriented philosophers usually mean by "mechanistic" is something like "mechanical in the sense of being able to run automatically without human intervention", rather than in the sense of "having to do with machinery". | Computing machines can be made out of gears, levers, and | pulleys, though they are not as powerful as conventional computers and | take up a lot more space. Depends on what you mean by "powerful" :-) Presumably, such a computer would be as "logically powerful" as any other computer, as long as it could do Turing-equivalent computations. Maybe it would be *slower*. | A computer can do anything a mechanism can | because anything a mechanism does can be described in terms of | sequences, selections, and loops. I think this is open to argument; when we read the article(s) by Carol Cleland later on, keep this issue in mind.