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Article 2784 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Virtual Person?
Message-ID: <1992Jan16.183647.19319@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <1992Jan16.040733.23764@cs.yale.edu> <1992Jan16.054723.16068@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Jan16.125322.25008@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 92 18:36:47 GMT
Lines: 25

In article <1992Jan16.125322.25008@cis.ohio-state.edu> chandra@boa.cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran) writes:

>This can't be the argument.  Premise 2 leaves open the possibility that
>the program P can also be implemented non-Chineseroom style with the 
>possibility of mentality, so the conclusion does not necessarily follow.
>Premise 2 should be:
>
>	Any program P can be analyzed Chinese-room style and thus shown not to
>	have mentality.  
>
>Now conclusion will follow.

I think I had it right the first time.  Searle doesn't want to show
that *no* implementation of a program can have mentality (e.g. he thinks
it's possible that the brain may implement innumerable programs).  He
wants to show that implementing a given program cannot be *sufficient* for
mentality -- i.e. that there doesn't exist a program P such that any
implementation of P would have mentality.  So exhibiting a single
implementation of any given P that lacks mentality is enough to
establish his case.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


