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Article 2246 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott)
Subject: Re: Searle's response to silicon brain?
Message-ID: <1991Dec18.190857.28331@cs.yale.edu>
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Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1991 19:08:57 GMT
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  In article <1991Dec18.172040.3506@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
  >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.
  >

More to the point, in the same article Searle proposed his "Chinese
gym" scenario in which each neuron is simulated computationally (but
not chemically).  Not surprisingly, he still said the resulting system
wouldn't really understand.



