[Wittrs] Courting Contradictions--A Master's Thesis Waiting to Happen
- From: "gabuddabout" <gabuddabout@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2010 23:17:46 -0000
Mr. 15th degree Ignoratio elenchi mason, Stuart writes:
"I think defending Searle's position ... leads to ... convoluted claims because
it always seems to come down to ... contradictions!"
I think it would be challenging to find Searle contradicting himself.
I think, also, that it wasn't hard to find systems repliers contradicting
themselves.
When you claim, along with Dennett, that the CR is underspecked, you mean
either:
1. Computationally underspecked.
2. Physically underspecked.
But the CR is UTM equivalent. It applies to the most robust _computationally_
specked system that ever will be created or destroyed. OTOH, if it is said to
be physically underspecked, Searle would agree, since he doesn't think S/H
systems are "machine enough." The latter claim is his newer argument but it is
consistent with the original CR. You like to point out how critics have made
him evolve his argument but that really is another ignoratio elenchi, mustn't
it be? Oh shush, of course it is!
So the contradiction is perhaps on your side, not Searle's.
The systems Repliers want to have things both ways:
1. above is what they mean by strong AI (weak AI for Neil since he doesn't like
to distinguish) while implicating that they also mean 2., given the systems
reply, which is what Searle means when saying S/H is not "machine enough."
Or perhaps we ought not to take them seriously, as Neil suggests. One short
step away from not taking Searle seriously also. But it is clear that Searle
is not joking. And it was supposed to be clear just what theses were being
advanced by AIers given the target article.
We find out later in the target article that the thesis that the brain causes
consciousness is a thesis that isn't widely shared.
Indeed, it is supposed to be incoherent for Hacker and, while Feser says that
the notion has been accepted for over a thousand years, one wonders what Feser
is on about when critiquing our only way of finding out.
Now, if Stuart wants to say that the issue is about how consciousness can be
replicated (simulated? or meaning emulated as in the real deal?) by
computational processes, it will do no good to claim that Searle's biological
naturalism, which is about the fact that the brain already does it, must be a
form of dualism just because Searle denies that computation is fleshed in
first-order causal terms.
That would be another example of an ignoratio elenchi, and one much more
grievous than Paul Churchland's notion of meaning similarity just because we're
having trouble with meaning identity.
Cheers,
Budd
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