[Wittrs] Re: Bogus Claim 3: Validity Issue: Where is the Equivocation?
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2010 01:34:27 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@...> wrote:
>
> SWM wrote:
>
> >Joseph Polanik wrote:
>
> >>you have yet to establish that there is an equivocation in the
> >>argument (as opposed to a conflation read into the argument the way
> >>someone might 'see' a bat in an inkblot).
>
> >You have simply refused to acknowledge the point. That doesn't mean I
> >haven't established it.
>
> you haven't even attempted to show that the third axiom contains an
> equivocation as defined by the sources you cite.
>
Have, too! Numerous times.
> consider my paraphrase one of the examples given by one of the sources
> you cited:
>
> >>all men have reason to fear man-eating sharks
> >>no woman is a man
> >>no woman has any reason to fear man-eating sharks.
>
> external to this argument, 'man' has two well known uses. the wide use
> means 'human' and the narrow use means 'male human'. so the wide and the
> narrow use are related as class and subclass.
>
> the fallacy listed above contains the wide use in premiss 1 and the
> narrow use in premise 2. that constitutes an equivocation. two uses of
> the same term in the same argument.
>
> have you shown this in the case of the third axiom? no. you've tried to
> expand the definition of 'equivocation' to suit yourself.
>
"Syntax does not constitute and is not sufficient for semantics"
Can be read:
"Syntax is not the same as semantics and saying we have an instance of syntax
is therefore not sufficient to say we have an instance of semantics."
or:
"Syntax is not the same as semantics and therefore cannot cause it by
constituting it (as H2O molecules are said to constitute water)."
Searle, himself, uses the water-and-its-wetness example as a way of describing
a particular kind of causal relation when he speaks of brains causing
consciousness, thus he accepts the notion that constituting can be read
causally.
Again, of course, he refers to the entire original third premise as
"conceptually true" and it is, FOR A NON-IDENTITY READING. But it isn't for a
non-causal reading.
However, the conclusion of the CRA depends on a non-causal claim.
Thus, the non-identity reading that is conceptually true (as Searle asserts for
the entire third premise) is IRRELEVANT for the non-causal claim. Thus, again,
the non-conceptual truth of the third premise is irrelevant for the CRA's
conclusion.
> >>after assigning the non-constitution claim to the [1] above, it is
> >>clear that [2] makes the non-causality claim.
>
> >... not true because:
>
> >2) He [Searle] speaks of identity (the constitutive question) elsewhere
> >as expressing a causal claim.
>
> >Thus his own usages demonstrate that he elides the distinction between
> >non-identity and non-causal in this premise and in terms of the
> >premise's role in the argument.
>
> evidently, you have invented a bizarre new rule of rhetoric (it's
> certainly not a rule of logic)
Actually it's an application of the way we speak in English which, of course,
is the language in which Searle gives us the CRA.
> according to which using one definition
> of a term in one argument is equivocal because the other definition is
> used elsewhere.
>
What makes it equivocation is the way it is deployed, i.e., to support a
particular kind of claim when the only way it can be seen to be true, based on
the CR itself, is in a way that DOES NOT SUPPORT THE OFFERED CONCLUSION.
An equivocation is when we switch meanings of a term in the process of the
argument and that is precisely what has occurred here.
The non-identity reading is conceptually true as Searle claims and we can
readily grant it. But then Searle wants us to use that premise to support a
conclusion about non-causality. The reason it looks compelling is because we
recognize the claim of conceptual truth in the first way of reading the text.
What many of us then miss, however, is that the meaning of the text shifts in
order to get us to the conclusion because NON-IDENTITY DOES NOT IMPLY
NON-CAUSALITY.
Of course the CR itself is described in terms which make this same mistake
because, as Searle tells us, there is no understanding anywhere in the CR. And,
we agree (or many of us do), there isn't. But what Searle, via the CRA, is
asking us to assent to is the claim that, because there is no understanding in
the CR as he has given it to us (as he has specked it), there could be no
understanding there (i.e., if it were specked more robustly). To hold this is
to think that the understanding, to be in a system like the CR, must be there
as a part of one or more of its constituent elements, i.e., that it must be a
property of one of its component processes (operations).
This, of course, implies that understanding cannot be understood as a system
level function but only at a basic process level, that is, that understanding
(the proxy for consciousness in this case) cannot be reduced to anything more
basic (and not already understanding) than itself.
> the bizarre nature of this interpretive convention is easily
> illustrated.
>
> suppose that an advocate, A, makes a claim using the wide definition of
> 'man'; for example, man walka upright and is capable of rational
> thought.
>
> suppose further that, sometime later, A makes another claim, one using
> the narrow definition of 'man'; for example, men have penises.
>
> according to you, the second statement is false because it contains an
> equivocation because advocate A (in two distinct claims) used 'man' in
> different ways.
>
Nope, that is totally off the mark of what I have said. What is pertinent here
is that Searle describes the third premise one way (syntax and semantics aren't
the same and this is "conceptually true") but gives us a conclusion to which he
wants us to assent that depends on a DIFFERENT reading of that same third
premise, i.e., the claim that syntax cannot cause semantics.
> obviously, that is an absurd conclusion; so, your Mirsky-specific
> expansive definition of 'equivocation' is utterly without merit;
>
No, your example is.
> hence, you have not shown that there is an equivocation in the third
> axiom.
>
> Joe
>
Keep trying Joe (as I expect you will anyway).
SWM
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