I won’t actually argue, just list some things that seem to be points where Richard talks past the intended meaning of the posts (irrespective of technical accuracy of the statements in themselves, if their meaning intended by Richard was what the posts referred to). Link to the post for convenience.
“premise that words refer to whatever generally causes us to utter them”: There is a particular sense of “refer” in which we can trace the causal history of words being uttered.
“It’s worth highlighting that this premise can’t be right, for we can talk about things that do not causally affect us. “: Yes, we can consider other senses of “refer”, make the discussion less precise, but those are not the senses used.
“We know perfectly well what we mean by the term ‘phenomenal consciousness’.”: Far from “perfectly well”.
“We most certainly do not just mean ‘whatever fills the role of causing me to make such-and-such utterances’” Maybe we don’t reason so, but it’s one tool to see what we actually mean, even if it explores this meaning in a different sense from what’s informally used (as a way of dissolving a potentially wrong question).
“No, the example of unicorns is merely to show that we can talk about non-causally related things.”: We can think/talk about ideas that cause us to think/talk about them in certain ways, and in this way the meaning of the idea (as set of properties which our minds see in it) causally influences uttering of words about it. Whether what the idea refers to causally influences us in other ways is irrelevant. On the other hand, if it’s claimed that the idea talks about the world (and is not an abstract logical fact unrelated to the world), there must be a pattern (event) of past observations that causes the idea to be evaluated as “correct”, and alternative observations that cause it to be evaluated as “wrong” (or a quantitative version of that). If that’s not possible, then it can’t be about our world.
You think that “clearly” Eliezer believed many of Richard’s beliefs were confused. Which beliefs, do you think?
I won’t actually argue, just list some things that seem to be points where Richard talks past the intended meaning of the posts (irrespective of technical accuracy of the statements in themselves, if their meaning intended by Richard was what the posts referred to). Link to the post for convenience.
“premise that words refer to whatever generally causes us to utter them”: There is a particular sense of “refer” in which we can trace the causal history of words being uttered.
“It’s worth highlighting that this premise can’t be right, for we can talk about things that do not causally affect us. “: Yes, we can consider other senses of “refer”, make the discussion less precise, but those are not the senses used.
“We know perfectly well what we mean by the term ‘phenomenal consciousness’.”: Far from “perfectly well”.
“We most certainly do not just mean ‘whatever fills the role of causing me to make such-and-such utterances’” Maybe we don’t reason so, but it’s one tool to see what we actually mean, even if it explores this meaning in a different sense from what’s informally used (as a way of dissolving a potentially wrong question).
“No, the example of unicorns is merely to show that we can talk about non-causally related things.”: We can think/talk about ideas that cause us to think/talk about them in certain ways, and in this way the meaning of the idea (as set of properties which our minds see in it) causally influences uttering of words about it. Whether what the idea refers to causally influences us in other ways is irrelevant. On the other hand, if it’s claimed that the idea talks about the world (and is not an abstract logical fact unrelated to the world), there must be a pattern (event) of past observations that causes the idea to be evaluated as “correct”, and alternative observations that cause it to be evaluated as “wrong” (or a quantitative version of that). If that’s not possible, then it can’t be about our world.