[Wittrs] Re: Reading the Third Axiom without the Equivocation
- From: "gabuddabout" <gabuddabout@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 22:17:38 -0000
--- In WittrsAMR@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@> wrote:
> <snip>
>
> > if the third axiom can be restated without the equivocation that you say
> > you see in it; then, what rational person would refuse to do so?
> >
> > Joe
>
> The third premise is the key to the argument. Read without the equivocation
> it depends on a belief that the non-causal claim is true. But that depends on
> a dualist presumption in the CR which Searle says he eschews (even while
> making that very presumption).
You have no basis for saying this. You can concoct one out of thin air by
conflating syntax with physics. But that would be to mischaracterize Searle's
meaning. Nothing follows about Searle given a mischaracterization.
>So the deeper problem with the CR and, by dint of that, the CRA, is the
>question of whether the absence of understanding in the CR is evidence for the
>incapacity of the CR's constituents to "cause" understanding.
That which is formal can't cause anything. You can try it out if you like. If
you don't want to try it out a la the CR, then maybe you can do as Gordon does
and create a different room and comment on that.
>
> If understanding is a system level feature, then the absence of understanding
> in the CR is only a comment on the CR as a particular system.
In particular, any S/H system. Remeber to distinguish as Searle does or you
are getting his reasons wrong. If you get his reasons wrong, then your
argument about the CRA's implicit dualism is vacuous, as it has always been for
more than six years.
>
> It requires an assumption of the irreducibility of understanding to anything
> more basic than itself to think that the failure of the CR to have
> understanding is not due to the kind of system the CR is.
Do you know that what you just said is half baked? Searle's biol. nat. is all
about how brains cause consciousness and how S/H systems have endemic
software/hardware separability which takes such systems out of the running as
candidates for causing semantics. Simulation, yes, though, and Searle isn't
arguing about simulation. He will, however, argue with those who conflate
simulation with duplication. He will distinguish S/H from nonS/H.
>
> Why? Because if it is a problem in the system, then the issue is just to fix
> the system and the CRA which is based on the CR can tell us nothing about any
> other R made of the same constituents (any other system).
>
> SWM
But Searle is commenting on a S/H system--ANY S/H system. In your lexicon, you
think that Searle is denying a possible physical system. He is not. He simply
thinks that S/H systems are "not machine enough."
If you don't distinguish what Searle is distinguishing, you are conflating what
Searle is calling "syntax" with physics.
This would make the third premise:
Substituting "physics for "syntax":
1. Physics is neither constitutive nor sufficient for semantics.
So the upshot is that you are just wrong to see an equivocation in Searle. You
create one by not distinguishing S/H from nonS/H systems. And you get a
ridiculous substitution instance for your effort.
Some conflate these by noting that anything can be given a computational
description. Searle maintains that if one has a physicalist explanation of
something, adding a computational explanation doesn't add anything significant
to the explanation. Of course, explaining how to simulate a process on S/H is
what some computational explanation is for.
Cheers,
Budd
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