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Article 2671 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: "causal powers"
Message-ID: <5964@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 13 Jan 92 20:40:44 GMT
References: <60265@aurs01.UUCP> <1992Jan10.013529.28228@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Jan10.181709.50682@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU> <1992Jan12.215059.22371@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 20

In article <1992Jan12.215059.22371@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <1992Jan10.181709.50682@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU> peterson@debussy.cs.colostate.edu (james peterson) writes:
>
>>I would argue that the relevant "causal powers" are not the
>>"abilities" to "cause a mind" but rather "of a mind." Searle writes:
>
>The relevant causal powers, for Searle, are the powers of the brain
>(NB not the mind) to produce a mind.  I recommmend reading Searle's
>response to K.G. MacQueen in BBS recently ("The causal powers of the
>brain: The necessity of sufficiency", BBS 13:164, 1990), to see 
>Searle himself spell out how entirely trivial the claim about causal
>powers is.  Which of course leads one to wonder why he bothers
>talking about these "causal powers" in the first place, as they
>add nothing new and simply seem to confuse the issue.

Again I agree with David Chalmers on this.  As I said before
a good way to think about it is to remember Searle's phrase
"brains cause minds".  His choice of "causal powers" invites
confusion, though, so I think he'd be better off with another
way of saying it.


