From: silber@orfeo.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Silber)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: "revisiting"+false dichotomies ( Re: Rock n' Reference )
Date: 12 Apr 92 22:32:43 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
NNTP-Posting-Host: orfeo

In article <1992Apr11.180817.10970@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@widder.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

(The actual argument in this posting commences at .+38lines)
...
                                 [ that which was referred to by the carets ]
>								 ^^^^^
>>(That's a "causal connection"!) Furthermore, I claim support for this view
>>in your own explanation of the insufficiency of purely denotative and purely
>>connotative signs, since you have there already admitted most of these
>>mechanisms as possible, except that you just didn't connect them to each
>>other in order to solve the problem as a whole. Thus my position is that
>>you can not deny my conclusion without either dropping some of your own
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>original argumentation, or show a logical flaw in my reasoning. (That's
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^XXXXXXXXXXXX^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>what makes it interesting.)
>
 It is not a question of logic but of tourism, as the famous baseball manager
 said, " deja vu all over again ":

If, on one hand, one identifies the neural pulses as purely denotative
>signs, ones that refer without expressing, one would be forced to postulate
>a causal relation in virtue of which these signs denote, stipulating that
>this causal relation is itself entirely immanent in nervous activity, in
>direct contradiction to the fact that our language, allegedly founded
>solely on such nervous activity,\footnote{ ... ... ...
                                  The practice of the Weglassprobe is
                                  useful here
> ... ... } has no trouble referring to objects and phenomena that occur
>outside of the latter.  For, if a purely material entity can be said to
>refer, the mechanism of such reference must be taken as being wholly within
>the provenance of the entity in question, 
...
>
>On the other hand, should one assume that the signs in question are
>connotative, referring by virtue of expressing an intensional meaning, then
>such meaning, by the above observation, must be entirely captured in the
>physical states of the brain; 
>

 Mikhail, you assert that your critics must "show a logical flaw" in your
 argument.  That assertion is a diversionary herring in the harangue.
 I think your description of these matters advances a false dichotomy
 as the foundation upon which you build your argument.
 
 In essence you state the equivalent of the following, I believe:

 1) (paraphrase of an MZ proposition)
 A finite physical system embodying "denotational links" can embody such
 links only by virtue of "external causal factors".
 
 1-b (paraphrase of MZ interpretation of 1)
 Proposition 1) is not consistent with the notion that a finite physical system
 can have UNTO ITSELF complete referential competence.

 2) (paraphrase of the dual MZ proposition )
    If , in a finite physical system, connotative references
    ( viz. meaning-laden links) exist, then,
    there is a contradiction "because"
 2b:   logically, meaning must depend on transfinite realms.

 I am not convinced of 2b. Can you demonstrate that 2b is the 
 preponderant view among the epistemologists+cognitive-scientists+
 neurobiologists+ai-people ??

 Your entire argument depends upon a 
 transcendental-logicist's positivism about 2b) .

 So what you are doing is based on your axiomatization with respect to
 2b).  Now if you wish to point me to the foundations of math etc., that's
 fine, but do the commonly employed axioms of set theory, for instance,
 actually imply 2b?  Does other 20th century foundational work 
 require 2b) beyond the domain of discourse of mathematics?

 You take 2b as an article of faith, and the extracts you have submitted
 about "reference" use 2b) as a neccessary 
 condition of ANY adn EVERY "valid" theory of reference.  

 It is probably beyond the competence of present day humans to 
 pin-down "meaning" with that much certainty !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Xref: sparky sci.philosophy.tech:2088 comp.ai.philosophy:4246