[Wittrs] Re: Constituting Subjectivity
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 11:51:26 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@...> wrote:
<snip>
> >[Searle] does not reject the system account vis a vis brains ... Now
> >this puts him in contradiction since, if brains do it in a system way,
> >then why shouldn't other physical platforms (say computers) do so?
>
> there is no contradiction. Searle is not saying that brains 'do it'
> because units performing syntactical operations are combined in a
> 'system way'.
>
> Joe
>
>
There is a contradiction because he thinks computational processes running on
computers (which he calls "syntactical" in the original argument but denies are
even that in his later argument when he moves beyond the CRA!), cannot do what
brain processes running in brains can do, on the grounds that understanding
cannot be reduced to physical processes in computers while never denying such a
reduction in the matter of physical processes in brains. He slips this one past
us (in the context of the CRA at any rate) by speaking of computational
processes running on computers as "syntax", thus suggesting a lack of
physicality vis a vis programs. But, of course, every "implemented program" is
physical, has a physical platform. That is, an "implemented program" is
instantiated (to use a common philosophical term) in physical events.
No, he does not call brain processes syntactical but that is part of the trick.
By keeping this term exclusively for computational processes running on
computers he leads us to forget about the physical nature of the processes
which are actually going on. Computers are no less physical than brains, their
operations no less physical events than those of brains whether we call them
"syntax" or something else.
SWM
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