[Wittrs] Leibniz and the CR?
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 22:09:14 -0000
I looked in on Analytic today and noticed that Walter had posted a piece on
Liebniz' mill, likening it to Searle's Chinese Room scenario:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/analytic/message/27069
". . . (Leibniz) has an argument against functionalism . . . that is quite
close not only to Searle's Chinese Room argument . . ."
He posts it as follows:
"Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it
are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of figures and
motions. And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel,
and have perception, it might be conceived to increase in size, while keeping
the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being
so, we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon
another, and never anything by which to explain a perception. Thus it is in a
simple substance, and not in a compound or in a machine, that perception must
be sought for." (Leibniz, Monadology Sec. 17, 1714)
It's a familiar item in Leibniz' thinking but it struck me that it is not quite
the same as Searle's CR at all, though Leibniz does seem to draw a rather
similar conclusion (though I expect Searle would never admit to that). Leibniz
thinks of the brain as a piece of machinery and, treating it as just so many
physical parts he points out that the subjectivity associated with a brain's
mind would not be found by examination of any of these parts.
In that way one might agree that Searle is saying something similar since he
says of the CR that "nothing in it understands Chinese and the Chinese Room
doesn't either."
From this he concludes, as we well know by now, that nothing that is a part of
what the Chinese Room is, is implicated in "causing" understanding (the proxy
for consciousness in this thought experiment"). Of course, my view of that
conclusion is also well reported on this list, i.e., I think the reason nothing
in the room understands is because understanding isn't a simple computational
process that is equivalent to the rote activities of the man in the room. And
the reason "the room doesn't either" is because the room, itself, is
underspecked.
But as we see above, Leibniz draws the conclusion that understanding must
therefore "it is in a simple substance and not in a compound or a machine that
perception is to be sought for."
The question that hit me on re-reading this is whether Searle is actually
drawing a similar conclusion, even if he would never agree to that, when he
asserts that the absence of understanding in the CR is evidence of the
incapacity of the CR's constituents to produce whatever it is we mean by
"understanding"? Is his insistence that the absence of understanding in the CR
means it could never be found in any R that consists of the same kinds of
constituent elements as the CR really just a modern revisionist rendering of
Leibniz' obvious dualism (or idealism, depending on how one reads him)?
Or is the CR really a very different scenario intended to show us something
quite different than Leibniz brain-as-mill?
And why would Leibniz have concluded that the only explanation for mind in the
case he offers must be sought in some kind of "simple substance"? Did
"substance" even mean the same thing for Leibniz as it does for us today? But,
even if it didn't, we have the other issue of being "simple" that surely means
the same, at least philosophically speaking, as in Russell's notion of simples
in his philosophy of logical atomism, a notion which the early Wittgenstein
shared and which Russell even credited Wittgenstein with developing.
In my own lexicon here I have suggested that when we think dualistically what
we are actually doing is holding that there must be at least two ontological
basics (not using a term like "substance" at all) which underlies and accounts
for the full range of things we find in the universe and that one of these
accounts for minds and the other for all the rest (what we call the physical).
So in a sense my criticism of Searle is that he is seduced by this picture of
ontological basics with regard to minds or to "simples" though it's not
entirely clear that Russell and the early Wittgenstein meant "simples" in quite
the same way. After all, Russell's logical atomism was about asserting that the
universe is made up of a plethora of simples, in contrast to F. H. Bradley's
Hegelian notion of a unified Absolute.
But why should Leibniz have never considered the option of a system level
feature/property/phenomenon? Was his thinking just grounded in different
pictures than those available to us? Should we, could we even be, seduced by
the same idea of something that is simple and thus irreducible to anything more
basic than itself?
And isn't Searle seduced by that picture and aren't many of us also drawn to
it? I know I was for many years and it took a lot for me to finally shake it.
Why do some shake it while others don't? Is it something different in our way
of understanding things? Is it some greater affinity for the picture of the
mind as, say, a soul?
SWM
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