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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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a clearly analogous system

Non functionalists disagree that it is analogous. So you need to actually make that argument beyond "it is obviously so because it is so from the functionalist standpoint".

Moreover, you're defending two contradictory positions here.

On the one hand, you seem ready to concede to metaphysical skepticism and the idea that knowledge is impossible. On the other hand, you're using the Naive Empiricist idea that systems can only be considered to exist if they have measurable outcomes. These are not compatible.

If what you're doing is simply instrumentally using empiricism because it works, you must be ready to admit that there are truths that are possibly outside of its reach, including the inner workings of systems that contain hidden variables. Otherwise you are not a skeptic.

What exactly breaks if we ask that the creator of the Room makes it so?

It requires the assumption that cognition is reducible to computation, which makes the entire experiment useless as a prop to discuss whether that view is or isn't satisfactory. It turns it into a tautology.

If the Room can equipped to productively answer questions that require knowledge of the inner mechanisms of the Room, then the problem is solved.

If computationalism is true, computationalism is true.

Plenty of mysterious and seemingly ontologically basic phenomenon have crumbled under empirical scrutiny.

You should be careful with that line of thinking.

Surely you must be familiar with the story of Lord Kelvin's speech to the Royal Society inwhich he stipulated that Physics was now almost totally complete save for two small clouds.

  1. the relative motion of the ether with respect to massive objects
  2. Maxwell-Boltzmann's theorem on the equipartition of energy

Explaining those "small" issues would of course end up requiring the creation of special relativity and quantum mechanics, which were neither small tasks, nor ultimately complete to this day and unearthed a lot more problems along the way.

Whatever one thinks of our epistemic position, I always recommend humility.

Non functionalists disagree that it is analogous. So you need to actually make that argument beyond "it is obviously so because it is so from the functionalist standpoint".

On the flip side... how is the thought experiment helping illustrate anything to anyone who doesn't already agree with Searle's take? It's as if he's saying "...and obviously the room doesn't know anything so functionalism is wrong."

One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens. 🤷

I believe the original intent was indeed that the concept of the room being intelligent should be absurd enough as to discredit the idea of functionalism. As in specifically designing something that is, ostensibly, fake would still pass the bar for what people would consider artificially intelligent.

The popularity of the thought experiment is, I think, a good example of a scissor statement where depending on your metaphysical outlook you will be puzzled that anybody could ever think the room is or isn't speaking Chinese.

Hence to disregard the experiment as fruitless is a mistake in my view, it's interesting precisely because it generates wildly different certainties.

Moreover, you're defending two contradictory positions here.

On the one hand, you seem ready to concede to metaphysical skepticism and the idea that knowledge is impossible. On the other hand, you're using the Naive Empiricist idea that systems can only be considered to exist if they have measurable outcomes. These are not compatible.

If what you're doing is simply instrumentally using empiricism because it works, you must be ready to admit that there are truths that are possibly outside of its reach, including the inner workings of systems that contain hidden variables. Otherwise you are not a skeptic.

I am large, I contain multitudes. As far as I'm concerned, there is no inherent contradiction behind my stance.

Knowledge without axiomatic underpinning is fundamentally impossible, due to infinite regress. Fortunately, I do have axioms and presumably some of them overlap with yours, or else we wouldn't have common grounds for useful conversation.

I never claimed being a "skeptic" as a label, that's your doing, so I can only apologize if it doesn't fit me. If there are truths beyond materialist understanding, regretfully we have no other way of establishing them. What mechanism ennobles non-materialists, letting them pick out Truth safe from materialism from the ether of all possible concepts? And how does it beat a random number generator that returns TRUE or FALSE for any conjecture under the sun?

Non functionalists disagree that it is analogous. So you need to actually make that argument beyond "it is obviously so because it is so from the functionalist standpoint".

I must then ask them to please demonstrate where a Chinese Room, presumably made of atoms, differs from human neurons, also made of atoms.

If computationalism is true, computationalism is true.

I reject your claim this is a tautology. A Chinese Room that speaks Chinese is a look-up table. A Chinese Room that speaks Chinese while talking about being a Chinese Room is a larger LUT. Pray tell what makes the former valid, and the latter invalid. Is self-referentiality verboten? Can ChatGPT not talk about matrix multiplication?

Whatever one thinks of our epistemic position, I always recommend humility.

I'm all for epistemic humility, but I fail to see the relevance here. It's insufficient grounds for adding more ontologically indivisible concepts to the table than are strictly necessary, and Searle's worldview doesn't even meet necessity, let alone strictness.

There's epistemic humility, and there's performative humility, a hemming and hawing and wringing of hands that we just can't know that things are the way they seem, there must be more, and somehow this validates my worldview despite it having zero extra explanatory power.

I never claimed being a "skeptic" as a label

Please understand that words refer to concepts, in this case the specific metaphysical position that you claim to adhere to, which is incompatible with materialism.

Now, since you seem to claim to be an instrumental materialist only, which I provided for in my statement, you can't, in good faith, refute anti-materialism from a materialist standpoint. Since you have renounced your claim to the truth and no set of axiom is privileged.

You can do it from within its own framework, or you can simply conjecture. But that doesn't seem to be what you're doing here.

What mechanism ennobles non-materialists, letting them pick out Truth safe from materialism from the ether of all possible concepts?

The same as materialists. Philosophy.

We have established that disagreeing with someone's axioms doesn't entitle you to any sort of metaphysical high ground, have we not?

A Chinese Room that speaks Chinese while talking about being a Chinese Room is a larger LUT.

You can't assume that cognition can be reduced to computation, this has to be argued. I mean you can assume it if you want, but then it is a tautology.

what makes the former valid, and the latter invalid

The fact that Searles did not make this assumption as part of his statement of the thought experiment. If by validity you mean relevance. I don't see the point in discussing the tautological version of the thought experiment. And neither do you since the initial impulse of this conversation is that it would be obviously useless.

somehow this validates my worldview

Given I've not actually provided my view on this topic here, I don't see how I could be engaging in this, if that's what you're trying to imply.

There can be more, and you're acting with a certainty that does not recognize this, which I find unbecoming.