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Article 2797 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Virtual Person?
Message-ID: <1992Jan16.204346.903@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <1992Jan16.040733.23764@cs.yale.edu> <1992Jan16.054723.16068@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Jan16.194359.1160@cs.yale.edu>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 92 20:43:46 GMT
Lines: 40

In article <1992Jan16.194359.1160@cs.yale.edu> mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott) writes:

>  Assume: There exists a program P such that a computational process
>carrying out P would constitute a mind.  ("Strong AI")
>
>  Assume: A human being could play the role of computer, and carry out
>N such computational processes (albeit slowly).  N might be 1, but it
>needn't be.
>
>  Then: N new minds would come into existence (by assumption 1)
>
>  But: The human wouldn't report acquiring N additional minds.  In
>particular, one of the predicted minds might understand Chinese, while
>the human might not.
>
>  Which is a contradiction.

I don't think this is a very clear way to put the argument.  I'd replace
your "but" with:

But: 1) The human wouldn't acquire additional minds.
     2) The "system" *certainly* wouldn't acquire additional minds (ha ha,
        what a ridiculous thought).
Therefore new minds do not come into existence.
Therefore contradiction.

I agree that Searle puts two much emphasis on the fact that the human
doesn't acquire an additional mind, where any AI advocate with half
a brain would instead ascribe the mind to the system.  But again, he
does think that the systems reply is independently ridiculous (I don't
think he thinks that the systems reply is incoherent or contradictory,
he just thinks it's ridiculous).  If he never even addressed the systems
reply, his argument would have the form you give above.  (Of course,
I think his arguments for (2) are weak, but that doesn't make the
form of the argument circular.)

-- 
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."


