[Wittrs] Re: Bogus Claim 3: Validity Issues: Conjunction or Equivocation
- From: "gabuddabout" <gabuddabout@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2010 20:48:16 -0000
Stuart had been selling this view of the third premise in 2004. I claimed that
he was just having a rough time with English. Actually, he's prolly just being
a smart ass and seeing just how much time he can waste. Here's part of an
exchange from Aug. 11, 2005:
Budd wrote:
> Well, you don't allow me to make the distinction between running
> programs on computers and brains.
Stuart responded:
"Maybe your distinction isn't really relevant when one stops to
examine it? We don't know what happens inside our brains that
directly connects to our experience of being conscious. We know there
are some parts of our brains which, when active, correlate with some
particular experiences and/or capacities associated with our mental
lives. But we know nothing about how the physical activities "cause"
consciouseness. All we know is that brains do X and computers do Y
and, just possibly, X and Y may be enough alike to yield the same
result: consciousness. Since we don't know what really is the "cause"
in brains, you can't stipulate that it's different than what is or
can happen in a computer. Yes, it's a different medium and a
different activity. But that doesn't mean that something different
can't yield an equivalent result."
I would think knowing how computers work would be enough to show that there is
hardware/software separability in them as opposed to brains.
But these days, brains are simply described as if massively parallel computers
a la Paul Churchland.
My point is that once one is willing to conflate functional properties (of the
kind where electricity is routed through logic gates) with physical properties
of brains, then one's physicalism is no different than Searle's save for a type
of description of a computer that might not be necessarily correct.
To go from Searle's actual reasons for arguing against strong AI to a claim of
implicit dualism in the CRA must depend on that new logic Stuart is trying to
invent--or has been trying to sell for 6 years.
He once noted that his "earlier" attempts at coming to terms with the CRA were
flawed. One early attempt did straight away with one of the clauses in the
third premise! I see now why. Stuart can't keep the two clauses distinct
somehow! So later he invented a way of reading them to suit his taste for
drawing a conclusion he wanted to reach in any way he could.
He forgot that the first premise contains a noncausality implication. So now
he has to eat his earlier idea that the noncausality claim simply came out of
nowhere, rendering the argument circular or question-begging.
The manipulation of electricity via logic gates can cause all sorts of behavior
alright. What programs can cause are formal state transitions and possibly
intelligent-sounding robots which cannot be conscious in virtue of formal state
transitions which just so happen to be effected via electricity. The state
transitions are defined formally even though we can get behavior out of them
via S/H conjunction.
Or I have it wrong and these days there is no longer the need to build a
computer with software/hardware separability?
Perhaps a massively parallel nonS/H system = brain?
If so, what is the parallelism a parallelism of? Just brute forces? That
would be Searle's line. Computations? Physical forces described as
computations which are just physical forces? Computations which are both
formal and physical?
How does one instantiate parallel computations as if one nonS/H system?
=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/
Other related posts:
