Caledonian: uh… he didn’t say you couldn’t make arguments about all possible minds, he was saying you couldn’t construct an argument that’s so persuasive, so convincing that every possible mind, no matter how unusual its nature, would automatically be convinced by that argument.
That point is utterly trivial. You can implement any possible relationship between input and output. That even includes minds that are generally rational but will fail only in specifically-defined instances—such as a particular person making a particular argument. This does not, however, support the idea that we shouldn’t bother searching for valid arguments, or that we’d need to produce arguments that would convince every possible information-processing system capable of being convinced.
That point is utterly trivial. You can implement any possible relationship between input and output. That even includes minds that are generally rational but will fail only in specifically-defined instances—such as a particular person making a particular argument. This does not, however, support the idea that we shouldn’t bother searching for valid arguments, or that we’d need to produce arguments that would convince every possible information-processing system capable of being convinced.