[Wittrs] Re: Equivocate Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace!
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 16 May 2010 14:24:37 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@...> wrote:
> SWM wrote:
>
> >[the question is] whether the absence of understanding in the CR is
> >evidence for the incapacity of the CR's constituents to "cause"
> >understanding.
>
> let's apply our new, shared 'systems within systems' vocabulary
> consistently at these crucial junctures. the two important questions are
>
> [1] whether the absence of understanding in the CR is evidence for the
> incapacity of the CR's systems to "cause" understanding.
>
> [2] what does Stuart mean by 'cause' in asking question [1].
>
> naturally, when I ask [1], by 'cause' I refer to true, cause and effect
> causation. if you are referring to identity, constitution or some other
> form of ersatz causation; then, it would be nice of you let us know.
> and, now would be a good time to tell us.
>
> equivocate now or forever hold your peace!
>
> Joe
Good lord, man, how many times do I have to say the same thing before you pick
up on it?
I said, repeatedly, that Searle blurs the distinction between identity and
causation in the third premise by using terms that can apply to either AND that
"identity" and "causation" have a range of uses in ordinary English, to wit, we
can speak of causation as being the result of physical interaction where A
brings about B or of it being the result of a constitutive relation where one
thing, on one level of observation, produces something else at another level of
observation.
My analysis is focused on showing all the ambiguities and overlaps in these
usages and then how these play a role in the way Searle gives us the third
premise and what the third premise can then imply or fail to imply.
You argued that one can take the ambiguity out and I agreed, saying then that
the flaw in the argument is thus made that much more apparent, i.e., that the
conclusion requires a causal claim (X doesn't cause Y), while the only aspect
of the premise in question that we would all agree to, on consideration of the
meanings of the terms themselves, is that X isn't Y (the non-identity claim).
I then noted that, for Searle to make the non-causal claim stick on its own,
without the elision between what he says is conceptually true (that X isn't Y),
he needs to show that the issue isn't about causation (using the term in the
sense of what you have labeled efficient causation, following Aristotle), which
can never be implied by non-identity, but in the constitutive sense which
Searle, himself, does use in his references to water and its features, e.g.,
wetness. But THAT version of cause (aside from quite possibly being the better,
because deeper, account of all claims of efficient causation) is not
established for what Searle calls "semantics" vis a vis the CR's constituent
elements (its "syntax") unless one makes certain moves which Searle explicitly
eschews.
To get to THAT claim of non-causality, one needs to think about "semantics" in
a very particular way, i.e., that it isn't reducible to something that is more
basic than itself (and which is not, by dint of that reduction, itself
"semantics"). This, of course, is dualist. But Searle not only denies being a
dualist, he doesn't even think it's defensible and, therefore, certainly
doesn't argue for it.
So for the CRA to show that the constituents of the CR can't do, in any other
configuration in which they are arranged, what they don't do in the CR, we need
to assume that the absence of what we believe they haven't done says something
about the CR's constituents.
BUT IF THE THING WE'RE LOOKING FOR IS A SYSTEM LEVEL FEATURE, RATHER THAN SOME
KIND OF BASIC FEATURE BELONGING TO ONE OR MORE OF THE CR SYSTEM'S CONSTITUENTS,
THEN IT WOULD NOT BE EXPECTED THAT THE CR'S CONSTITUENTS WOULD BE UNABLE TO DO
IN SOME OTHER ARRANGEMENT WHAT THEY CAN'T DO IN THE CR. That is, it says
nothing about what the constituents can do on a system level, IF THEY ARE
ARRANGED IN A SUITABLE SYSTEM. The point, of course, is that the CR isn't such
a system, i.e., it is UNDERSPECKED.
The failure of the CR to have understanding tells us something about the CR
itself, not about its constituent elements.
SWM
=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/
Other related posts:
