[Wittrs] Re: The CRA accord. to Stuart
- From: "gabuddabout" <gabuddabout@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:25:42 -0000
Stuart writes:
> In the present case we have an example where the CRA's obvious failures are
> being obscured by a conversion of its terms to a new set of terms and
> notations, with their own syntactical rules (e.g., "Ex" read as "there exists
> an x" such that - add appropriate terms here!).
>
> In the course of dealing with it, the meanings are forgotten in favor of the
> new symbol system. I think Wittgenstein departed Russell's sphere of interest
> for very good reason!
>
> SWM
If you go back to the target article in BBS, you may find that Searle does a
fine job.
OTOH, if you want to focus on a simple CRA with three premises, the third of
which is really two independent clauses, you would do well to see the first
premise in the terms spelled out in the target article.
It was your conversions which obscured the CRA after all--and in the name of
Wittgensteinian clarity!
You were trying to claim that in the CRA there was a noncausality claim lifted
out of an identity claim. Well, the meaning of the first premise contains a
noncausality claim. And this is why you can create a thought experiment
showing that no matter how much computational complexity is happening in a S/H
system, an intelligent humnculus couldn't get any semantics out of it solely in
virtue of the computational description of the system.
So there is a dilemma:
If you conflate the computational properties with the physics, you have a
nonS/H system which may cause consciousness/semantics. This is consistent with
Searle's biological naturalism.
OTOH, if you adequately grasp how S/H systems work, then the question is
whether 2nd order properties, as such, may cause semantics. But if such
properties are really abstract, then even if you had a humunculus doing ALL the
syntactic operations in the whole system, you still wouldn't necessarily have a
case of semantics. Hence the thought experiment.
My main criticism of your efforts is that they are not sensitive to the plain
meanings Searle uses in the target article, particularly the meaning behind the
premise that programs are formal. If you want to say RUNNING programs, it is
of no help, since the alternatives above remain, one of them being consistent
with Searle and the other being subject to the CR found in the target article,
or so I am supposing.
If one wants to say, along with Stich, that the case of Helen Keller is one
where she is of a different psychological kind, then Fodor's response will look
like Searle's, to wit, that if that's what a computational account of the mind
results in, then such an account is most likely subject to a reductio argument.
If one tries Gordon's shot at a different room called a language room, one
wonders just what motivates Gordon besides not seeing what motivated Searle in
the first place.
Cheers,
Budd
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