[Wittrs] Re: What Is Ontological Dualism?
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:51:06 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Gordon Swobe <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
> --- On Tue, 4/6/10, SWM <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> >> Meant to write below that "this conclusion does NOT
> >> fall under the definition of 'intuition' as you want to
> >> say."
> >
> >
> > A Freudian slip then? If it's not about your intuition,
> > what do you think it's about? Is it just the claim that
> > non-identity implies non-causality (which we already know is
> > not logically the case)? -- SWM
>
> Searle's third premise entails a very simple claim: nobody and nothing can
> understand symbols solely from manipulating them according to their shapes.
>
Searle's third premise says what it means (though it means two different
things): "Syntax does not constitute and is not sufficient for semantics".
The non-identity claim embedded in this premise is obviously true but the
non-causal claim isn't obviously true at all and thus requires other supporting
evidence at the least (not provided by the CR or included in the premises of
the CRA) and may, in fact, be false.
Thus, it cannot support as true a conclusion that says that programs, running
as processes on computers, cannot accomplish what brain processes running in
brains can accomplish if configured in a sufficiently robust manner.
> I don't see it as a complicate claim. It only looks complicated to those
> caught in the grips of an ideology.
Or seems simple to those in the grips of an ideology. Such a claim cuts both
ways, Gordon. Moreover you may want to recall my history here, that I started
out agreeing with Searle. So if my change of mind reflects being in the grip of
an ideology how is that accounted for by a record of having considered and
finally rejected the Searlean account on the basis of the argument's merits?
It's oh so easy to accuse those who disagree with us of being "in the grips of
an ideology" while maintaining we aren't, but, as with other points you have
made, THAT isn't an argument. It's just a charge and a denial of the other's
claim.
> Some want so badly for it to be wrong that they go to great lengths to create
> all sorts of convoluted arguments against it.
>
Or else they see how wrong it really is, despite its initial attractiveness.
> For those folks, Searle offers his simple Chinese room thought experiment.
> The experiment gives *empirical evidence* to substantiate the claim.
>
Empirical evidence implies the ability to run and test the experiment
repeatedly in search of consistent results. But Searle doesn't provide any
basis for thinking he has run and tested the CR or even thinks that can be
done! Indeed, he calls it a "thought experiment" which is the very opposite of
a genuine empirical experiment. It's a confusion to latch onto the term
"experiment" and think that, because the term is used for the CR, it implies no
significant difference between the CR and actual scientifically conducted
experiments.
> But some people still can't see it, even despite the evidence.
A "thought experiment" provides no "evidence". It merely asks us to consider a
scenario and determine what we would say about it and its implications.
> If you need to build an actual Chinese room to see it then perhaps you should.
>
> -gts
>
There is no individual in existence who could operate with sufficient speed and
there is no complete set of symbols and matching look-up table with a
sufficiently comprehensive list of instructions that could produce the
appearance of an understanding intelligence responding in Chinese in the room
in question such as Searle proposes we imagine occurs.
We are asked, by Searle, to imagine that this is done however, i.e., that we
agree, by stipulation, that the man in the room succeeds in producing the
semblance of understanding and then he asks us to say whether, given the actual
lack of understanding of the sort we recognize in ourselves, we would call this
performance of the room "understanding" at all.
Of course, we agree we wouldn't.
But this assumes that the man in the room could ACTUALLY do what he is said to
be doing in the thought experiment (Dennett reminds us he could not) AND that
the understanding in question could only occur in the room if there was
something in the room that understood Chinese as a human Chinese speaker
understands that language.
But this latter assumption leaves out two very real possibilities whose
omission leaves the CRA a failed argument:
1) That understanding may not be what we think it is; and
2) That a system that is larger than any of its individual constituent elements
could be the seat of the understanding rather than any of those constituent
elements.
SWM
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