From: Andrew Brown (Andrew@LUBS.LEEDS.AC.UK)
Date: Fri May 28 2004 - 07:16:15 EDT
Costas, Ian and all,
(1) Money
Costas, money as form of 'purchasing power' means, quantitatively,
that money serves as an index of the size of the feasible set, i.e. as
no more than a numeraire. Money does not serve to homogenise
the diversity of goods. Thus 'purchasing power' cannot be compared
quantitatively through time due to qualitative change to the feasible
set (changed in goods, new goods, old goods). In these
circumstances a science of money must look for something other
than 'purchasing power', as which the diverse goods are equivalent,
shouldn't it?
This argument holds for money pre-capitalism and within
capitalism. And this explains Marx's commments regarding Aristotle
and money. It sugests that, from our perspective (where to use
Marx's analogy we are able to study the anatomy of 'man'), we can
see that money is the form of value (=congealed abstract socially
necessary labour) but from Aristotle's perspective (he only has the
anaotmy of an 'ape' to study), he just gets confused. Specifically,
Aristotle was part of a slave society where actual labour was not
(was not considered) a fluid activity of fully fledged humans so that
'labour' was considered an empty abstraction referring to the
diverse, fixed, unconnected activities of slaves ('talking anilmals').
For Aristotle, labour thus has the same status as use value, and
provided no means of commensuration of exchange values.
(2) Mind
Ian: Wittgenstein seems to have got the point that 'mind' refers to
activities of the human body (Ryle being much influenced by
Wittgenstein). By all means this occurs only through the inner
neurophysiology etc. but if we are to study the objective side of
mind as such then we need to look at outer bodily activity, not those
inner 'mechanisms', don't you think?
I mentioned to you and Paul C. the work of Copeland, on Church-
Turing and A.I. I felt very comfortable with Copeland's arguments.
They seem to me to directly challenge your conceptionn of AI and
mind. They explicitly draw from Wittgenstein, if I remember rightly.
They do so in the same sort of way as my para above.
To remind you of the Copeland ref.:
Stanford encycolpedia of philosophy:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/church-turing/
Many thanks
Andy
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