[Wittrs] Re: Reading the Third Axiom without the Equivocation
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 12:06:16 -0000
Budd, I am not going to get involved saying the same things over and over with
you ad infinitum since it is clear it's a pointless exercise and, besides, you
have already informed us that you are done debating with me. I'm good with that.
However, below you did say something of interest because it's new and because
it invites me to make a point vis a vis your arguments I haven't made before
though it will probably have as little effect on you as just about everything
else I've ever said. Suffice it to say that I am fully aware of your profound
commitment to John Searle's idea of consciousness or mind or whatever, both to
his CRA and to his later argument which he made when he abandoned the CRA in
tacit admission of its many flaws.
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "gabuddabout" <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
<snip>
> 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.
>
And yet we know (or Searle at least would admit to knowing) that physics is the
"cause" of semantics because brains, which are physical, are (in his lexicon,
of course).
Now what does this substitution say of the CRA? On its face it looks absurd
because we know that semantics, grasping or imputing meaning to anything, is a
mental occurrence and thus not identifiable in the world as any kind of
physical object. So how could we ever say of physics that it is constitutive or
sufficient for semantics?
Yet, if we did not, we would be placing ourselves in a wholly dualist mode,
insisting that whatever mind is, whatever understanding is, whatever it is to
grasp or impute meaning, it had to be sourced in the non-physical. But this
goes against what we know of how the world works and what Searle, himself,
would say of how the world works. And Searle insists he's not a dualist.
Again we are thrust, by Searle's reasoning (or rather he is) into contradiction!
> 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.
>
You just don't get the semantics of my point. Maybe it's a physical issue?
> 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
Your last point isn't relevant to the issue. I am not speaking of so broadly
defining computation as to give "anything" a "computational description" but,
rather, of whether the things we all agree are computers (and thus admit of a
description in terms of executed computations) can be built to be conscious
like ourselves (to have an understanding equivalent to what we mean by
"understanding" when the term is applied to what we are and do).
Your persistent misstatement of the issue in order to throw up this same old
response is nothing more than making a strawman for yourself so you can pretend
to have refuted the claim that Searle's CRA is wrong.
But as we have seen here, Searle himself recognized he was wrong vis a vis the
CRA (see his introduction to his new argument in The Mystery of Consciousness).
After all, why go to the trouble of a new argument if the old would have done?
SWM
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