From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wupost!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aiai!jeff Thu Jan 16 17:19:34 EST 1992
Article 2630 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle and the Chinese Room
Message-ID: <5942@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 10 Jan 92 17:57:03 GMT
References: <1991Dec5.210724.12480@cs.yale.edu> <1991Dec8.192843.6951@psych.toronto.edu> <1991Dec11.170157.27053@cs.yale.edu> <1991Dec11.203452.9419@psych.toronto.edu> <317@tdatirv.UUCP> <5913@skye.ed.ac.uk> <364@tdatirv.UUCP>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 33

In article <364@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>In article <5913@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>|In article <317@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>|
>|>A virtual person is the set of behaviors, memories and attitudes that
>|>are instantiated by the operation of an algorithm in my brain, but which
>|>do not alter my own memories or attitudes.
>|
>|Is that really suppose to be all there is to a person, a set of
>|behaviors, memories, and attitudes?
>
>That is really all that can be *verified* to exist from the outside.

Memories are verified from outside?

>[Unless one wishes to count the body as well].

Which we should.  How else than by looking at the body can we
make any progress in finding out how memories, behaviors, and
so forth work?

>Thus that is all that has any scientific relevance.  Anything else
>is, at present, merely unfounded speculation or philosophical bias.

I see.  So if it can't be verified, it must be unfounded
speculation or bias?

Do we really have to argue about Positivism, as well as everything
else?

>It may exist, but there is no way of telling.

And so, what, exactly?


