From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aiai!jeff Tue Jan 21 09:26:45 EST 1992
Article 2843 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle, again
Message-ID: <6008@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 17 Jan 92 20:38:15 GMT
References: <5952@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1992Jan13.200632.36402@spss.com> <5984@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1992Jan15.192358.37288@spss.com>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 54

In article <1992Jan15.192358.37288@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <5984@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>For the last time, Searle doesn't assume some mysterious "causal
>>powers" exist and use that to reach his conclusion that computers
>>do not understand.  He may do lots of other dubious things, but
>>that isn't one of them.
>
>You are misunderstanding me.  I don't say that Searle starts with the causal
>powers and ends up with the conclusion that computers don't understand.
>I say that Searle comes up with the causal powers to rescue the brain
>from being reduced to meaninglessness by his own argument.  

Not at all.  As Dave Chalmers has pointed out, the causal powers
have only a trivial role.

>Why doesn't the Chinese Room argument prove that brains don't think either?

Because the Chinese Room is not a model of a brain; it's a model of
a computer running a program.  It shouldn't matter what you use for
the computer, so the Chinese Room should count.  But even if it
doesn't count, even if Searle's argument is wrong about computers
and programs, the Chinese Room still wouldn't count as a brain.
Some other argument would be needed to show that brains are no
better off than Chinese Rooms.

>It's by no means obvious how neurochemistry produces such things as 
>understanding and meaning, 

I agree.

>just as it's not clear how a computer program could do the same thing.

Still agree.

>If Searle doesn't watch out, he'll have created 
>the equivalent of Zeno's motion paradoxes-- a way of thinking that seems to 
>prove that things can't be the way they are.

You may well be right.  If he doesn't watch out.

>Ah, but some vague talk about "causal powers," and a bit of bluster about how
>"obvious" they are, will paper over the difficulty.

What bluster about how "obvious" they are?  I suggest reading the
first Reith Lecture.;

>That's why it's important to see an argument for these "causal powers",
>and not a mere assumption of them.  And he is simply assuming them, in the
>Sci. Am. article: "Axiom 4.  Brains cause minds."

Well, I'm beginning to think the Sci Am article may not be a good
place to go if one wants to understand Searle.

-- jd


