On Jun 19, 3:59 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 1Z <peterdjo...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >> how would the world be different if causes WERE reasons? > > > > if someone gets struck by lightning, God really does hate them. > > I pray to God you're joking.
Causes=reasons is *your* idea. I'm just stating the consequence. > > Reasons are aims and intentions in the minds of intelligent agents which > > explain and justify their actions. If you want to promote causes to > > reasons, you are going to need a lot more intelligent agents. > > So the difference between intelligent agents and other complex things like > cells or computers or redwood trees or galaxies is that intelligent agents > do things because of reasons but other mechanical things do things because > of causes; Sufficiently advanced AIs and non human animals may count as intelligent agents too. > and the difference between causes and reasons is that reasons do > things to intelligent agents but causes do things to other mechanical > things. No. Causes do, reasons explain. >And around and around we go and where we stop nobody knows. You seem to be alleging that "intelligent agent" and "reason" have been defined in a mutually circular way. They haven't been. > And when you say "the reason the street's wet is that it's raining" you are > implying that asphalt is an intelligent agent. No, that's a deviant use of "reason", which you have based you whole argument on. It is as if you are insisting that ships really are female because they are called "she". -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
