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My claim is kind of orthogonal, that “actual instances” is a red herring and that the only thing that matters is observational equivalence.
by iainmerrick 9y ago
My claim is kind of orthogonal, that “actual instances” is a red herring and that the only thing that matters is observational equivalence.
- mjburgess 9y agoYes, but you're defining "observation" as some weird intra-wood process (, intra-silicon in the case of digital machines). Observation means, for example, reflecting some light off the thing. Does a piece of silicon become transparent if I program it to model glass? No. So, trivially, it is observed immediately not to be equivalent. What you mean by "observation" is: can a person using the model system inform themselves of the target. Do I get the message "lets visible light through: 98%" from the machine when I have correctly modelled the glass. That message isn't observation, it's calculation. Calculation is what happens when I use a tool to inform myself about something. That the machine emits the right symbols in a way that it is programmed to, so that I acquire accurate beliefs about the world, says nothing of the machine. The machine does not become transparent.