[Wittrs] Re: Focusing on Scenario 3: Causality
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 13:56:52 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@...> wrote:
<snip>
> okay, so you are an argumentative dualist. how is that different from my
> claim that your argument is rife with doublethink?
>
Making two, or more, points is not necessarily to engage in double think (taken
from Orwell's novel and meaning to think one word means two distinct and
contradictory things).
> >As I've said many times, though to no avail where you're concerned, all
> >of the premises, including the third, MUST be true for the CRA's
> >conclusion to work, i.e., for the CRA to work AS AN ARGUMENT for its
> >conclusions.
>
> yes; and, since you have acknowledged that the first two axioms are
> unassailable, the issue concerns the basis for taking the third axiom as
> true.
>
No, I have acknowledged that, for the purpose of this discussion, I am
stipulating to them. I think they have problems in terms of the meanings of
some of their terms but I can grant what Searle seems to mean by them for now
(even while recognizing that his usage is often vague and misleading, e.g.,
when he calls computers or computer programs "syntax" he fails to adequately
explicate his use of "syntax" because he sometimes seems to use it in one way,
as pure abstraction, and at other times in another way, as when he references
"implemented programs").
> >My further claim is that the only way the third premise can be read as
> >true, absent independent evidence (of which there is none invoked by
> >Searle in his description of the CRA and his laying out of the CRA) is
> >for us to presume that understanding is an irreducible feature in the
> >universe (dualism). But the third premise masks the problem because of
> >its textual ambiguity (the equivocal usage it represents).
>
> no. the non-causality claim that is embedded in the third axiom may be
> taken as true on the basis of the CRT just as Searle indicated.
>
Not at all since he specifically says it's "conceptually true" when, in fact,
only a certain way of reading it qualifies as that, while THAT way is not
relevant to the conclusion Searle purports to draw while relying on it.
> claims about causality are the focus of scenario 3. here, by 'causality'
> is meant true causality, not the ersatz causality that results when the
> concept of constitution is dressed up in the language of causality.
>
There is nothing in the CR that shows that what Searle calls syntax cannot
cause what he calls semantics, either in the constitutive sense he habitually
relies on in describing how water's wetness is caused or in what you want to
refer to as "efficient causation". If understanding (semantics) are a function
of a certain arrangement of Searle's "syntax" they may be so either based on a
constitutive claim or on a claim of efficient causation (though that would be
rather hard to fathom -- after all, even efficient causation boils down, in
physics, to constitutive causation).
> in Scenario 3, you hypothesize that the relation between syntax and
> semantics is one of [true] causality; specifically, that syntax causes
> semantic understanding. this hypothesis leads to the prediction that
> there would be understanding in the CR.
Not if the point has to do with arrangement of the constituent syntactical
elements which, of course, is the point I have consistently been making!
> however, the absence of
> understanding despite the presence of syntactic operations in the CR
> constitutes a falsification of the hypothesis.
>
> Joe
>
Not if understanding is a system level phenomenon, i.e., it involves "more of
the same".
SWM
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