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Article 2240 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle's response to silicon brain?
Message-ID: <1991Dec18.172040.3506@spss.com>
Date: 18 Dec 91 17:20:40 GMT
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In article <40822@dime.cs.umass.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>Can anyone tell me if Searle has reacted to the counter-
>Gedanken experiment of replacing each neuron in a brain
>with a silicon, digital, neuron simulator?  As I understand
>his position, he would have to maintain that such a modified
>human does not understand what they utter, even though their
>performance is no different from a normal human.

"One can imagine a computer simulation of the action of peptides in the
hypothalamus that is accurate down to the last synapse.  But equally one
can imagine a computer simulation of the oxidation of hydrocarbons in a car
engine....  And the simulation is no more the real thing in the case of the
brain than it is in the case of the car...."
--Searle, Scientific American Jan. 1990, p. 29.

Searle believes that understanding and other mental phenomena have some
*physical* basis, tied to their actual implementation in the brain, which
computers cannot reproduce, although they could simulate them.


