From: kevin@rotag.mi.org (Kevin Darcy)
Subject: Re: After 2000 years, can we say that Christian Morality is
Organization: Who, me???
Lines: 41

In article <1qme79$c0k@kyle.eitech.com> ekr@kyle.eitech.com (Eric Rescorla) writes:
>In article <1qm36b$gn2@horus.ap.mchp.sni.de> frank@D012S658.uucp (Frank O'Dwyer) writes:
>>In article <1qktj3$bn9@squick.eitech.com> ekr@squick.eitech.com (Eric Rescorla) writes:
>>#In article <1qkn1t$59l@horus.ap.mchp.sni.de> frank@D012S658.uucp (Frank O'Dwyer) writes:
>
>>#Like I said before, DES works whether I value my privacy or
>>#not.
>>
>>O.K., which DES?  The abstract function DES? that stops working in any 
>>important sense if no-one cares for the importance of truth, mathematics, 
>>meaning, information, etc.  A DES chip or DES s/w?  That stops working in any 
>>important sense if no-one values science, objective reality, etc.   DES
>>does not work in a value vacuum.  Nothing else does, either.
>
>This is just truth by blatant assertion. Your "in any important sense"
>seem to be just weasel words. Imagine that I have a box which
>accepts 16 bytes and uses the first 8 to ECB the second 8.
>It still does a perfect job of DESing, whether or not any input
>is being made at the time--whether or not anyone values mathematics..

If no-one looks at the results, or acknowledges their correctness, in what
meaningful sense can the chip be said to "work"?? Does flibozity exist?
By "flibozity", I mean a particular, extremely complex configuration of 
physical phenomena, which no-one, absolutely NO-ONE cares about in the 
slightest. Does it exist, Eric?

Getting back to the question of whether the DES chip "works", doesn't "work" 
mean something like "achieving the desired/expected effect"? Note the way 
intentionality subtly underlies that definition. Even if we take the 
definition as "expected", instead of "desired", can you deny that conformance 
to expectations is itself a value of sorts, namely the scientific values of 
accuracy-of-prediction and reproducibility-of-results?

The phenomenologist Husserl, for one, considered Intentionality to be the
primary ontological "stuff" from which all other ontology was built --
perceptions, consciousness, thoughts, etc. Frank is by no means alone in
seeing intentionality (or "values", as he puts it) underlying all human
experience, even the so-called "objective" experiences, such as 
measurements of the natural world, or the output of your DES chip.

								- Kevin
