[FOM] The Lucas-Penrose Thesis vs The Turing Thesis

[Robbie Lindauer]

On Oct 8, 2006, at 12:05 AM, aa at post.tau.ac.il wrote:

> I dont agree with the rest of your message, but as I declared not long
> ago, I see no point to argue with you. Obviously, the fact that no 
> expert
> (whether that expert believes that we are machines or not)
> accepts your arguments, does not cause you to try to understand what is
> wrong with them --- and it never will.


As for the "no expert" clause, what one person considers an expert, 
another considers a lunatic.  Hence my universal disdain for axiomatic 
mathematics as fairy tales.

Welcome to Philosophy.

As entertaining as this is, I suspect that your issue may be with 
exactly this sentence below:

>> If there were a computer program that has all the theorems of PA as
>> theorems and is consistent, then, potentially, a human can determine 
>> an
>> undecidable sentence for that computer program.

Since, for someone who rejects the Lucas theory, the human can not 
potentially decide the sentence for the given machine in question.   
The problem is that the onus for explaining WHY the human can not 
decide this question -not even potentially- lies clearly with the 
mechanist.  Without ASSUMING that a particular brand of materialism is 
true, call it Turing Machine Materialism, (as if there were no other 
choices!) there's no particular reason to assume the conclusion either.

Robbie Lindauer