[Wittrs] Re: An Issue Worth [Really] Focusing On
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 12:46:46 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "gabuddabout" <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
<snip>
Budd writes:
> [Searle] went out of his way to say two distinct things in the third premise
> and no amount of bad English is going to get him as saying the same thing in
> two different ways--that would be like making Searle look like a monkey but
> only due to monkey shines on the part of the interprer.
>
Yes, Searle clearly went out of his way to make the point in two ways, Budd. I
think you are right on that and others here, who want to say he meant to say
the same thing on both sides of the statement are wrong. But that does point up
a big problem with his formulation. Four of us are arguing this and all four
are reading it differently. That alone should tell us something about the mode
of expression Searle used. It isn't clear.
My point, of course, is that Searle's third premise trades on the ambiguity of
reading that his vagueness made possible (intentional or otherwise, and I will
give him the benefit of the doubt and say it was otherwise). Instead of saying
"Syntax isn't the same as and cannot cause semantics" (which looks like what he
meant) he says "Syntax does not constitute and is not sufficient for semantics".
The latter phrasing allows of two readings at least:
1) "Syntax isn't the same as semantics and it is never sufficient to to say we
have an instance of semantics when we have an instance of syntax." (This reads
the text on both sides as a non-identity claim where the second side depends on
the assertion of non-identity on the first side.)
or
2) "Syntax doesn't constitute semantics (syntax doesn't make up semantics) and
thus to have an instance of syntax isn't sufficient to have semantics (because
syntactical constituents cannot combine to give us semantics).
Note that #2 is a claim of non-causality.
Recall that Searle asserts that the premise in question is "conceptually true".
Note that the causal reading isn't conceptually true though the identity claim
in #1 can be said to be.
Note that the conclusion of the CRA (that computers can't cause minds, as
brains are said by Searle to cause them) is a causal claim (about an assertion
of non-causality).
Note that the non-identity reading doesn't imply anything about non-causality.
Note that Searle's assertion that the third premise is conceptually true only
applies to the reading in #1.
But note that Searle, as you say, went out of his way to formulate the third
premise as a compound sentence (X and Y). Therefore he presumably to make two
distinct claims.
However, the claim that the premise is conceptually true only applies to one
reading. But recall that Searle does not make THAT distinction. He doesn't say
part one of the premise is conceptually true. He says the whole premise is.
Therefore he is eliding the distinction between one part of the premise and the
other and, in doing so, allowing the notion of conceptual truth to serve as the
basis for believing the conclusion that rides on the non-causal reading.
Because both sides of the premise can be read either as a non-identity or a
non-causal claim, this confusion allows us to buy into the idea that the CRA's
conclusion is logically inescapbable.
But as we have already seen, in order to believe the non-causal part of the
claim is true, we have to believe something else about the CRA, i.e., that what
Searle calls "semantics" cannot be present as an outcome of some particular
combination of what Searle calls "syntax". But that, unlike the non-identity
claim, IS NOT CONCEPTUALLY TRUE! Indeed, it depends on our adopting a
particular conception of "semantics", i.e., that it cannot be broken down to
anything more basic than itself! And that, again, is a dualist presumption.
So the CRA hinges on a dualist presumption which is obscured by the ambiguous
wording of its third premise. The logic of the CRA is driven either by
accepting a misleading elision between two readings of the third premise (the
equivocation) OR by accepting another (suppressed) premise regarding
"semantics" itself that is not self-evident, not "conceptually true" based on
the CR, but, rather, arguable based on empirical information that drives our
conceptualization of it.
SWM
<snip>
>
> Cheers,
> Budd
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