[Wittrs] Re: Bogus Claim 3: Validity Issues: Conjunction or Equivocation
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 23:38:15 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "gabuddabout" <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In WittrsAMR@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Joseph Polanik <wittrsamr@> wrote:
<Snip>
> > Are you saying that Stuart once admitted that he had made a mistake!?
> >
> > that happens about as often as you hear the phrase 'Romulan dissident'.
> >
> >
> > Joe
>
> Well the thing is that Stuart's first shot at parsing the premises involved a
> complete omission of the noncausality claim in the third premise such that
> the conclusion seemed unmotivated by the premises.
>
> He had to acknowledge that that was a mistake.
>
While it's true enough that I have made and acknowledged errors over the years
(including once thinking the CRA was correct!) I hardly think that you, Budd,
can be trusted to give a fair account of what my past errors were. Perhaps you
can offer a link here to where I acknowledged the mistake you say I made?
In fact, I initially thought the problem with the CRA lay elsewhere, i.e., in a
dual meaning of the identity aspect of the claim and have since revised my view
to note that it's a conflation of the identity and causal readings of the third
premise.
I also, for what it's worth, think there are other problems attendant on the
other premises including ambiguities in the meanings of "syntax" and
"semantics" but I think they are rather marginal concerns compared to the
equivocal wording of the third premise and the underlying dualistic
conceptualization of consciousness which informs what Searle wants us to take
away from the CR scenario.
> After that, he then tried to say that the noncausality claim was being
> squeezed from the nonidentity claim of the third premise. I eventaully got
> around to saying that the noncausality claim is part of what the first
> premise entails.
>
A link or two to show us what I said and what you "eventually got around to
saying" would be most helpful. It certainly beats self-interested testimony!
> He insisted on treating the CRA as if it had no connection with his target
> article because, as an argument, it could be evaluated separately.
"He" still insists on that since an argument, if it's any good, stands or falls
on its own terms. Note that this is not to deny the significance of context but
only to say that one should read the argument and not try to reinterpret it
according to what one hopes will be the least deleterious reading of it.
On the other hand, Searle himself has spent years revising and refining it and
many of the iterations look quite different from earlier ones. That said, I
have always agreed to consider ANY version of the argument offered on this list
by any of the posters (as long as it is an honest rendering of what Searle
actually said at one point or other). Given that we have discussed here the
1980 version, the late eighties version and the early nineties version. I'm not
particular and always prepared to consider any legitimate version of it you or
anyone else here has desired to offer.
> He kept on insisting that Searle made the argument and I kept insisting that
> he should see the argument in relation to the target article.
>
You have still failed to tell us what in the "target article" (what, by the
way, does "target article" even mean???) is relevant and not being addressed in
these discussions here?
Moreover, why not provide a link, along with the information about what is
relevant, to the "target article" (circa 1980) that you deem so important to
understanding Searle's CRA circa 2010! It should be easy enough to do if you
think it's so critical.
> I thought this a bit cheesy. And it continues to this day when just a couple
> days ago Stuart seemed not to know what I weas referring to when speaking of
> the target article.
>
I still don't. If you mean the earliest article by Searle on this subject, it
is surely outdated given all his subsequent refinements and iterations.
However, as you know I started out in all this by reading a very early article
of his provided to me by my then college age son who was taking a cognitive
science course. I have no idea if that is the article you have in mind or some
other. We have also read a very early on-line article of Searle's over on one
of the lists we were conversing on previously. Is THAT the article you mean?
But, of course, the easiest thing is just to post a link to the article here
and then there will be no further question or, if it's not available on-line,
transcribe whatever you deem significant and missed in these discussions and
give a full citation for off-line reference. Surely you can do one of these
things instead of just continuing to moan about how I am ignoring your
reference to an unspecified "target article"!
> Surely Stuart is not that bad? And if not, just can choose among the
> alternatives I just spelled out in my previous post today.
>
> I'm predicting he'll be holding Searle's position while obfuscating as to how
> 2nd order properties (the computational ones Searle calls syntactical) are
> just like 1st order properties. But then he won't be getting S/H systems
> right either.
>
This is just an assertion as usual. If you read my reply to your claims in that
post you'll see that I offer an array of reasons for why it is wrong to make
the first and second order properties distinction you make. Your approach, on
the other hand, is just to reiterate the claim about there being such a
distinction yet again, making this discussion entirely one-sided, i.e., you
make claims, I respond with counterclaims and my reasons for them and you
respond by making the same claims again, as if no response had ever been
offered.
SWM
> This is Stuart being all over the map. It is an existential map. It says
> "You are here" all over it.
>
> Cheers,
> Budd
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