john_SPAM{at}wilkins.id.au (John Wilkins) wrote in
news:cbnls7$2os1$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org: 

> Perplexed in Peoria  wrote:

>> I strongly disagree.  This is an issue of appropriate levels of
>> explanation.  Thermodynamics has been successfully reduced to
>> statistical mechanics, but engineers still talk and think in
>> terms of heat flow.  They certainly don't talk about the propagation
>> of random molecular motion, even though they know that that is
>> what is really going on.
 
> That is not a supererogatory concept. There is a direct reduction of
> talk at one level to talk at another. But if they talked about what
> heat "wanted" to do, and it led them to ascribe misleading properties
> to heat ("it's a Saturday, so it's less likely to do useful work, as
> it's tired") would you then think it so harmless? And lest ye think
> this frivolous, I have heard people say similar things about
> computers. Not experts, of course, unless they were joking or
> "explaining" to the laity, but even so...



Now if they made the same "Saturday" statement with regard to a human, 
would you agree? I assume from the way you phrased your example that you 
would  How about if they made the same statement with regard to a 
chimpanzee, would you then agree with it? If they made the same statement 
with regard to a dog, would you agree? If they made the same statement 
with regard to a mouse, would you agree? If they made the same statement 
with regard to an ant, would you agree? Just exactly when would you 
disagree? How stupid does a person have to be, before they become a 
machine? How stupid does a machine have to be, before it becomes "heat". 
No I don't think this is frivolous, but I don't see where you have 
provided any basis to differentiate heat and humans with regard to their 
"intentions". 


Yours,

Bill Morse
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