Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'works' and 'The Wanderer and his Shadow'

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3 ideas

18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 6. Artificial Thought / c. Turing Test
A fast machine could pass all behavioural tests with a vast lookup table [Block, by Rey]
     Full Idea: Ned Block proposes a machine (a 'blockhead') which could pass the Turing Test just by looking up responses in a vast look-up table.
     From: report of Ned Block (works [1984]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 5.3
     A reaction: Once you suspected you were talking to a blockhead, I think you could catch it out in a Turing Test. How can the lookup table keep up to date with immediate experience? Ask it about your new poem.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna]
     Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom.
     From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88)
     A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate').
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 2. Natural Purpose / b. Limited purposes
The end need not be the goal, as in the playing of a melody (and yet it must be completed) [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Not every end is the goal; the end of a melody is not its goal; and yet: as long as the melody has not reached its end, it also hasn't reached its goal. A parable.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Wanderer and his Shadow [1880], §204)
     A reaction: A nice message for Aristotle, that there is no simple separation of ends and means.