[Wittrs] Re: Reading the Third Axiom without the Equivocation
- From: "gabuddabout" <gabuddabout@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 22 May 2010 20:32:54 -0000
I'm also issuing a last post today, after having issued previous "last posts."
I hope to break with tradition by offering some new things along with enormous
amounts of necessary repetition because Stuart and myself are growing old. :-)
--- In WittrsAMR@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> 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.
Gosh I was really hoping to find out the new thing I doodled. Anyway,
I'm not only committed to it, I show that you are too while getting him wrong
and getting the third premise wrong, and wrongly finding a contradiction in
Searle. I'll expose how you attempt this mismanaged feat below:
budd earlier:
> > 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.
> >
>
Stuart (aka sid Caesar) = >
> 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?
This issue is not what it says of the CRA. That's your first false step. But
you got me to bite, so...buttons on your underwear. The issue is what it says
about your conflation of what Searle means by syntax with physics. YOU are
contradicting yourself by trying to have things both ways, i.e., strong AI but
with a description of a nonS/H system which latter Searle isn't arguing
against. Searle says the contradiction is on the side of the system repliers.
To the extent that, in your very lexicon, you believe the system repliers have
a point, the point actually being made is not one Searle is arguing against. I
say this because there is the idea that Searle was arguing against a strawman.
That's bs. So is Dennett's bs vis a vis Fodor arguing against strawmen. Fodor
simply shows that a lot of what connectionists think they got is simply not
what is got. And some of it is shown not to be got given the architecture.
I'll bet that some architecture is spelled out a bit too computationally to be
a candidate and that Fodor and Searle converge on classical architecture being
a noncandidate.
So, choices:
1. Classical architecture with "enough layered programming."
2. Connectionist architecture (still can be done by a universal Turing machine)
3.. NonS/H architecture.
In:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Philosophy_and_Science_of_Language/message/7546
You wrote (Aug. 18, 2005):
The question of strong AI is not whether
> any particular
> computer properly fitted with the right program can
> produce a mind
> with a mental life akin to ours but, rather, whether
> there is some
> configuration of computers and programming that can
> do it. There is a
> great difference between the two formulations but if
> this is not
> noticed, all sorts of confusions arise. The author
> of Budd's post
> proposed a simple example of computer plus program
> and Searle did
> that as well in the beginning.
>
> But in the course of our many discussions on this
> list, we have long
> since left that rather simplistic formulation behind
> since we have
> discussed not a Chinese Room, for instance, but a
> Chinese building or
> even a Chinese City and this, I think, has long been
> forgotten in the
> heat of these discussions.
Ned Block showed that a consequence of functionalism was that a Chinese city
could/would be conscious if.... Put it this way, Stuart, you have been
confused for a long time. Credit to you that you end up with Searle's position
anyway except you have now (maybe like some others) changed your mind vis a vis
the system reply. Somehow, it is the system plus the computational properties.
But computational properties are observer relative. There's nothing there but
physics and how we can get to use physics to manipulate syntax. Add as much
syntax as you want, and it don't mean a thing because it ain't got that swing
we're looking for. OTOH, if you're trying to swing weak AI, the CRA and later
summary statements (eight points at the end of the APA address) are not
designed to kill all that jazz.
_Now look_:
>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.
Then it wouldn't look absurd "on its face" would it? You're making little
blunders all the time, it appears, along with the big one of conflating what
Searle calls "syntax" with physics.. I so love repeating that!
>So how could we ever say of physics that it is constitutive or sufficient for
>semantics?
Brains, but you were on a roll with major/minor cognitive dissonance vis a vis
getting Searle straight or well swung.
> 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!
And you are unaware that it came from your attempt to find a flaw in the third
premise instead????? How could you be that muddled? You're not? Then you
must be joking, Sid!
>
>
> > 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?
Your point may well be that it is a physical issue. And I've shown that Searle
isn't arguing where you think he is. And "the semantics of your point" reduces
to your point.. You make your point in a way that suggests you're not smarter
than a fifth grader, that's all. You sneak in a possible difference that
amounts to none and argue that the difference Searle sees is a result of seeing
consciousness in a certain dualist way. It is utter crap.
Let's review that subtle distinction I pasted again. In your words from 2005.
See above. Then see the dilemma above IT too. Can't decide? Here's how I
decide it: 1. and 2. for weak AI, 3. for philosophy of mind and possible AI of
the type that really has that certain swing of semantics, consciousness. Don't
like it? Then you just might be a criteriologist like Dennett and conflate
strong with weak AI and may be happy to think weak AI is as good as it can
possibly get--and he is a zombie for so pretending to think (just kidding, even
though Jaron Lanier thinks he MUST be a zombie in his 2010 _You are not a
Gadget_).
> > 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.
It may very well be if you're a criteriologist or property dualist in need of
minor spanking.
>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).
Well, are you conflating computation with physics or not? If you are, you can
try and make a messy for Searle but it isn't getting him right. And there is
no upshot to a bad argument.
>
> Your persistent misstatement of the issue
I've done a decent job showing you to be the one either confused or
persistently in joke mode such that if it is the latter, then at some point one
is going to call you on it while acknowledging you must have known a good deal.
So, confused or Sid Caesar. You pick.
> 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.
I'm only talking about _your_ inept claim, after all; you know, the one that
led to the ridiculous substitution instance you practically welcomed later in
order to do your schtick. As far as a platonic claim (THE claim) that it is
wrong, I'll ask God about that. Searle still thinks its good and doesn't need
to hear from God about it. He just thinks he doesn't even need the CRA.
To the extent that Searle himself said he was mistaken, he said he was mistaken
in thinking that the hypothesis could even be true or false. It is an
incoherent hypothesis (given what we know of how programs work). It is only
natural that you would argue with him saying that this newer take is worse than
the older. But do note that the upshot of what you think is possible is just
Searle's position. Just because he doesn't conflate computation and physics
doesn't mean that one who does has essentially a different position. One in
name only maybe. But what good is that? A way to make monkey shines with
Searle's perfectly good sense? I don't think so.
> 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
That's a good question. That you think it is telling is cool. You will find
that I think it is telling in a different way than you do, however. Today, he
says he was mistaken in thinking he needed an argument like the three step
proof with two independent clauses available in the third premise of one of the
summary statements of his study of how programs work in the real world. That
he was mistaken doesn't mean that he now doesn't think they were good
arguments, however. The thesis of strong AI is incoherent in a way that the
thesis of weak AI (as Searle distinguishes these) is not. Tell that to Neil
too since he once tried to argue that Searle would have been more honest or
more thoughtful (I forget which was the adjective offered) to have simply
argued against weak AI. But he didn't. And neither did he conflate weak and
strong AI as Neil proposes we ought to.
How could you be so bad at Searle that you don't see what I see and end up
agreeing with Searle anyway without realizing it?
Since I think anybody who has been paying attention can see, I've been the more
accurate as far as Searle interpretation goes. I'll allow that Gordon, Neil
and Stuart are all smarter than myself in real life. I mean, how dumb does one
have to be if there is enjoyment in arguing with a shoe? (Still working on my
Yiddish and still think to this day that Searle isn't a sort of Marrano of
reason who deliberately distorts philosophical usage to help us see beyong
conceptual dualism (aka: property dualism). Hint: Anybody accusing Searle of
property dualism may be doing so just because he's alive--upshot, everybody has
to be one. But that would be a kind of fifth gradish lack of distinction and
difference. Prolly better to see exactly what he's driving at. It won't bode
well for "epistemology as queen of philosophy" though.
I hope to have shown that your joke can only go so far as to show that you are
confused--which would be the more funny if you weren't.
So, Sid Caesar (who did a bit by asking and answering what jazz was), I'll end
this whole thread with a quote from Aug. 18, 2005:
> I actually found Budd's last post on Searle very
> useful and pretty
> thorough, hitting the main points of Searle's
> thinking and
> explicating them quite effectively. I have great
> respect for Searle
> and often find myself in agreement with him, though
> I continue to
> think he got his strong AI argument wrong.
Cheers,
Budd (What is jazz?)
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