🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <MxG=!XC@engin.umich.edu>, R o d Johnson (rodj) writes:

 In article <erwin.722217539@trwacs> erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin) writes:
he> [That meaning parallels brain state]

rodj> "Are considered" by who?  Says who?  Suppose I were to say "two
rodj> statements are considered equivalent if they hold in exactly the same
rodj> possible worlds."  Why is my claim any less definitional than yours?

Well, I don't know about more definitional, but it is certainly more
immediatly meaningful. 

Given some quite widely shared assumptions about the world, the
brain-state definition has a well defined interpretation and, although
we may not be able to decide it because of technological limitations
or more inherent limitations such as QM, it does seem clear what a
decision procedure for it might be.

On the other hand, when you start throwing around terms like `possible
world' and `hold' then you are dragging in a _huge_ raft of auxiliary
machinery and new assumptions. Then, even if we all agreed just what
we meant by holding in a possible world, there is no reason to think
that the equivalence so defined relates to anything interesting in the
real world.

[Well, that should get me lynched by any passing semanticists]

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rjc@cogsci.ed.ac.uk			_O_
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