Re: Machines that think...

Paul A. Toth (toth1@JUNO.COM)
Mon, 19 May 1997 21:21:14 EDT

In response to:

There's the rub. Paul won't let me speak for myself.
Avoidance of incoherence in one's presuppositions is compatible with
any level of artistic creativity Paul Toth can describe, I'm sure.
When he finishes his cake perhaps he will tell us about a great novel
with incoherent presuppositions.

** I think we made a great little leap from logical inconsistency to
incoherence here. But professor won't let me speak for myself. There's
a difference betwen trying and purposefully failing, a difference between
inconsistency and willful obliteration of all logic. Not that I rule out
the latter as being useful in some way, if in the right hands.

-- There clearly are some great tales whose presuppositions are not only
coherent, but whose characters suffer destiny's fate more inexorably than
Paul or I got right answers on mathematics exams.

** You most certainly did better than I on mathematical tests. How about
Moby Dick. What consistency is there in that tale but the consistency of
mad souls? Here is the crux of what I'm saying: does that novel rule
out any philosophically worthy statements of its author? Or is he damned
as grabbing too many tigers' tales?

The latest, best evolutionary account of the evolution
of human inferential capacities invokes the social selection pressures
associated with promise keeping, the detection of promise breakers,
and the enforcement of promises. Seems a little dramatic. But then
I'm probably a hack.

** You keep confusing what I'm saying with an attack on you or
philosophers -- I was targeting that statement towards simplistic writers
who leave out the inconsistencies novels either on purpose as opposed to
those who, like Percy, I believe, necessarily. Contradictions abound in
his favorite philosopher, Kierkegaard. And so one would expect to find
contradictions within the fiction written by a man whose religious
conversion was partly driven by what he found in that philosopher's work.

-- I meant no offense by the use of the term 'redneck. That term, for
this son of rural Ohio and descendant of Alsatian stone breakers and
cutters, is self-referential.

** I know, and that's how I took it. I wasn't sniping at you with that
statement. It was supposed to be an in joke between two people who
shared, if nothing else, once and future proximity to... rednecks. Are
"tales" still popular there, as they are here? To the mall!

Really, I mean no offense; you could probably outwit me in a second. But
I enjoy my useless flailing. There's always work tomorrow for something
more... utilitarian.

Cake for all!

Paul