[Wittrs] Re: Reading the Third Axiom without the Equivocation
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 16 May 2010 13:53:10 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@...> wrote:
> SWM wrote:
>
> >Joseph Polanik wrote:
>
> >>if the third axiom can be restated without the equivocation that you
> >>say you see in it; then, what rational person would refuse to do so?
>
> >The third premise is the key to the argument. Read without the
> >equivocation it depends on a belief that the non-causal claim is true.
>
> read without the equivocation, the third axiom makes two distinct
> claims: the claim that syntax does not constitute understanding and the
> claim that syntax does not cause understanding.
>
And the causal claim is not established as true by any argument or conceptual
"evidence" from the CR which is, of course, the problem with THAT premise and
the argument whose conclusions depend on all its premises being true.
> >But that depends on a dualist presumption in the CR
>
> another bat in another inkblot?
>
I've already argued for it numerous times. That you don't see or get it isn't
evidence that it isn't adequately argued.
> there is no dualistic presumption in the CRT. it is a thought
> experiment. you imagine yourself in a certain situation and you draw a
> conclusion. Searle draws a conclusion in the first person, that 'I do
> not understand chinese'. we've been using the third person analogue of
> Searle's conclusion, that there is no understanding (of chinese) in the
> CR.
The presumption occurs in the CRA which is built on the CR. By itself the CR is
just a scenario. The issue is what does it tell us, what conclusions are we
obliged to draw from it? The conclusion that what the constituents in the CR
cannot do in the CR they cannot do in any other R either (a room more robustly
configured with a more complex system) DEPENDS on a belief that it is the
absence of what we are looking for in the CR that matters for the conclusion.
The way you get to that belief (that it matters) is by assuming that what we
are looking for must be present in recognizable form in the CR for the
constituents of the CR to be implicated in its production. But if they don't
have to be because they're a function of a certain configuration of those
constituents, rather than the constituents themselves, then the assumption
collapses.
Of course, the assumption is, itself, a dualist position, i.e., that whatever
it is we call mind cannot be reduced to anything more ontologically basic than
itself.
>
> you've acknowledged that this is so, that there is no understanding (of
> chinese) in the CR;
Right. The system fails, not the constituents of it. Recall Brawley's comment:
the Bicycle Reply, as it were.
> and, presumably, you do not admit to being a dualist
> or to having any latent dualistic tendencies.
>
What does my being a dualist have to do with whether Searle is, based on HIS
argument? MY argument about Searle's implicit dualism is based on what must be
assumed to reach the conclusion that the CR demonstrates that what the CR's
constituents cannot do in the CR they cannot do in any other R either.
> so, where's the dualism?
>
> Joe
See above (for a change).
SWM
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