From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!rutgers!mcnc!aurs01!throop Thu Jan 16 17:19:16 EST 1992
Article 2599 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: throop@aurs01.UUCP (Wayne Throop)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: "causal powers"
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Date: 9 Jan 92 16:33:04 GMT
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> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
> If [..Searle's Chinese Room..]
> has the right "causal powers", it would have understanding.

What puzzles me is how one could tell, even in principle, whether
something or someone did or did not have these
quote-causal-powers-unquote.

Or rather... it seems to me that the CR *does* have causal powers in all
the interesting ways.  The CR's output affects the external world
every bit as much as human speech and motor acts do.  Similarly, a
computer running a program affects the external world (and is affected
by it), causing electrical power to be consumed (or not), paper to
have symbols printed on it (or not), tapes to spin, light to blink,
and so on and on.  If you short it, does it not spark?

Hence my question: is there anything that a human can cause that a CR
or a computer cannot?  If not, in what sense does the human have
causal powers (quoted or not) that the CR or computer lacks?

At best, "causal powers" seems a very ill-chosen term.

Wayne Throop       ...!mcnc!aurgate!throop


