[Wittrs] Re: No Effing Way--Again
- From: "gabuddabout" <gabuddabout@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 01 May 2010 20:26:39 -0000
--- In WittrsAMR@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Gordon Swobe <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> --- On Fri, 4/30/10, SWM <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> >> Read the third axiom at face value. You'll notice
> >> nothing there about consciousness or its causes!
> >>
> >
> > The third premise plays a role in the argument, the CRA.
>
> The question here concerns the claim of the third axiom, not the claim of the
> CRA as a whole. I see no "non-causality claim" in the 3rd.
But I do. "Insufficient for" means (in the context of the third premise)
"insufficient to cause." And "does not constitute" I take to mean something
like nonidentical in the context, the context being one of two independent
clauses, one an apparent non-identity claim and the other a noncausality claim.
What gives?
>I see only a simple claim about syntax and semantics: a claim that the former
>neither constitutes nor suffices for the latter. I see nothing more than that,
>and the truth of this axiom seems to me pretty darned obvious.
"neither constitutes nor suffices [to cause--Budd]"
>
> Every time I bring this up, you reply by looking outside the 3rd axiom for
> evidence to support your contention that the 3rd really means or could mean
> something other than what it plainly states.
It plainly makes both a nonidentity claim and a noncausality claim. Stuart's
problem is that he is blind to the first premise when trying to suck a
noncausality claim out of the independent clause having to do with nonidentity
in the third premise. Stuart, in short, is wondering how one justifies the
independent clause having to do with noncausality--and his first attempt to do
so was to try to justify it in the only way available to Searle FROM WITHIN THE
THIRD PREMISE ALONE. I like to think of this as a joke. But it may be
essential retardation. Think I don't know that you both are doing slapstick?
Or that one of you is retarded? ;-)
>
> Apparently you don't understand the role that axioms and premises play in
> formal arguments, or your thinking is hopelessly muddled, or both!
>
> -gts
Let's not forget who's on first, what's on second, and I don't know is on
third. Gordon, what was your motivation for your LR again?
Was it because Searle mucked up his own thought experiment by having it?
Note: Once one can (is able) to distinguish systems that have
software/hardware separability form those, like brains, which have no similar
separability, then one immediately can see that the software is adding nothing
intrinsically causal to the hardware that can handle any amount of software.
One might as well give the S/H system a head start and a wild goose such that
one puts in an already intelligent humunculus only to find out graphically what
one already knew given the distinction.
That's why it can be said that there is no need for the CRA in Searle's words.
Syntax, the formality of software, (Or Information) simply doesn't name a
natural kind--we are perfectly okay with saying otherwise because it is a
perfectly acceptable idiom.
"A garage door opens." Fine. "The nothin' nuths." Not as fine. The digital
computer is conscious given more computing power than a hand-held calculator."
This doesn't rise to the level of making sense, since "computing power" trades
on 2nd order properties; otherwise, we would be in the habit of saying that
computing power names nothing essentially different from raw brute power
without a computational description.
But everything can be given a computational description.....
Hence, the thesis of strong AI is one of the following:
1. Incoherent.
2. An empirical whore (unfalsifiable).
3. Strongly dualistic.
4. A species of absolute idealism (all is computation, i.e., mind).
5. A product of behaviorism.
6. So much a whore that it, with enough conflation of concepts, can be
alternately fleshed as Searle's very position, just with a different candy
wrapper.
Want some candy anybody?
Three cheers to the wonderful schtick of BOTH Gordon and Stuart.
Somebody tell Georges Metanumbnuts I called. (Maybe an inside joke)
Cheers,
Budd
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