Sphexism, Physicalism, Syntactical Engines and Semantic Engines, Not to Mention Cognitive Zombies

An interesting article over at Feser's place, with a different approach from the Chinese Room argument, and yet much the same. This time it is the robotic actions of the Sphex wasp as compared to the intellectually exploratory capacities of humans.

"Now, Dennett, perceptive fellow that he is when he wants to be, argues in Chapter 2 of his book Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting that any purely physical system is going to be essentially sphexish. The reason is that qua physical such a system can only ever be sensitive to syntactical properties, and syntactical properties can never add up to semantic properties. Now a non-sphexish creature would have to be sensitive to semantic properties. Hence a purely physical and thus purely syntactic system is inevitably going to be a sphexish system. Dennett thinks it can at least approximate non-sphexishness, however, because a sufficiently complex “syntactic engine” will in his view at least approximate a perfect “semantic engine.” And sphexishly dogmatic materialist that he is, Dennett insists that human beings are purely physical. Hence, though we seem non-sphexish, Dennett insists that we really are sphexish, but -- being exquisitely complex syntactical engines -- in so subtle a way that for practical purposes we can treat ourselves as if we were not.

But as Howard Robinson points out in the introduction to his edited volume Objections to Physicalism, Dennett’s position is a muddle. A purely syntactical engine will not even approximate a perfect semantic engine, because it will fail to be semantic at all. Syntax by itself doesn’t get you imperfect semantics; it gets you exactly zero semantics, just as the ketchup kids use for blood at Halloween time will never get you even imperfect real blood no matter how much of it you pour out. Dennett knows this, which is why (as Robinson notes) he has to resort to the essentially instrumentalist position that our sophistication as complex syntactic engines makes it useful for us to interpret ourselves as if we were semantic engines. But this too is a muddle, for interpretation is itself an act that presupposes real semantics rather than a mere ersatz. Dennett’s further reformulations of his position (e.g. in his paper “Real Patterns”) only ever paper over this fundamental incoherence rather than resolve it, but his dogmatic materialism makes him think there must be some way to make it something other than the reductio ad absurdum that it is.

As is the usual case, the Materialist seeks only to justify his presuppositions, not to investigate and accept logically derived conclusions.

There is magic associated with "complexity" just as the magic which is designated to "deep time": these can turn X into Z, just because. This magical thinking is necessary to bend the mind away from noticing the actual non-material nature of human existence. It can be explained in terms of magical capabilities of complexity and deep time etc. even though there is no possible mechanical cause which is attached; just the magic. It is another symptom of the religiosity of Atheists as they protect their own theory of origins with unprovable, antirational dogma.

Says Feser:

"It is not a kind of inductive inference to the effect that since we usually act unsphexish, we must really be unsphexish (as if further empirical evidence could in principle lead us to revise this “opinion” about ourselves). It is much simpler and more obvious and conclusive than that. It is that we have things sphexish creatures do not have: concepts. End of story. The reasoning isn’t: “We don’t act very sphexish; therefore we must have concepts.” It’s rather: “We have concepts; that’s why we don’t act very sphexish.”

And finally,

Now, you’ll recall from a recent post the notion of a cognitive zombie -- a creature physically and behaviorally identical to a normal human being, but devoid of concepts and thus devoid of the other aspects of rationality. You might think that a cognitive zombie would be sphexish, but that is a mistake. If it was sphexish, it wouldn’t be behaviorally identical to a normal human being, and thus by definition wouldn’t be a cognitive zombie. A true cognitive zombie would be something which would, like a sphexish creature, be devoid of concepts, but which, like a normal human being, would behave as if it had concepts.

The notion of sphexishness thus helps to clarify the notion of a cognitive zombie. If ya think I’m sphexy, then you don’t think I’m a cognitive zombie. A sphexy Rod Stewart on his best day wouldn’t pass for a cognitive zombie. A James Brown sphex machine wouldn’t pass either. People magazine’s Sphexiest Man Alive definitely wouldn’t be a cognitive zombie. The notion of a cognitive zombie is the notion of something as utterly devoid of concepts as the simplest of any of Dennett’s purely syntactical engines, but whose lack of concepts is nevertheless more perfectly undetectable than that of even the most complex and perfect of Dennett’s syntactical engines. Is this notion even coherent? I think not, but that is a topic for another time.