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When I went to Harvard as a math graduate student in 1976, the professors I was most looking forward to engaging with in some way weren't mathematicians. One wa

When I went to Harvard as a math graduate student in 1976, the professors I was most looking forward to engaging with in some way weren't mathematicians. One was Ken Arrow, in large part because of his Impossibility Theorem, which I later extended in various (unpublished) ways. The other was Putnam, in large part because of his paper The Mental Life of Some Machines, which for me was quite effectively blew up mind/body duality. I sat in on an undergraduate course by Putnam. It wasn't all that exciting, but a few memorable moments were: -- His confession/apology about having greatly changed his mind in recent years on political matters. (Apparently he'd been a leading left-winger in the then-recent Vietnam War protest era.) -- A crack that "If it weren't for the parallelogram law of forces, physics would be like sociology." -- A crack that Unitarianism was the belief that there exists no more than one god. -- His description of his standard final examination: "Part A: Write a question suitable for this course. Part B: Answer it. You will be graded on both parts."

grzm 9y ago
> "Part A: Write a question suitable for this course. Part B: Answer it. You will be graded on both parts." This is brilliant. Thank you for sharing it!
- CurtMonash 9y ago
  Most welcome! And by the way: -- He told the story of a student giving the obvious answer. -- For some reason he did NOT point out that that answer would actually only work as an infinite recursion.
cousin_it 9y ago
> The Mental Life of Some Machines Sounds very interesting! My Google skills are failing me, can someone find a pdf?
- CurtMonash 9y ago
  Not easy to find. But from memory, the tl;dr is: Any argument purporting to prove that human beings do or don't have minds or souls separate from their bodies applies equally well to finite automata. So, in the trichotomy I love, either: -- There's some argument proving that "physicalism" is correct. -- There's some argument proving that both humans and arbitrary Turing machines have minds/souls. -- Most things that have previously been written about the subject miss the point. :)

grzm 9y ago

> "Part A: Write a question suitable for this course. Part B: Answer it. You will be graded on both parts." This is brilliant. Thank you for sharing it!

CurtMonash 9y ago
Most welcome! And by the way: -- He told the story of a student giving the obvious answer. -- For some reason he did NOT point out that that answer would actually only work as an infinite recursion.

cousin_it 9y ago

> The Mental Life of Some Machines Sounds very interesting! My Google skills are failing me, can someone find a pdf?

CurtMonash 9y ago
Not easy to find. But from memory, the tl;dr is: Any argument purporting to prove that human beings do or don't have minds or souls separate from their bodies applies equally well to finite automata. So, in the trichotomy I love, either: -- There's some argument proving that "physicalism" is correct. -- There's some argument proving that both humans and arbitrary Turing machines have minds/souls. -- Most things that have previously been written about the subject miss the point. :)