From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!christo Mon Mar  9 18:34:36 EST 1992
Article 4200 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <1992Feb28.022105.28548@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Feb28.165550.13014@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Mar2.031342.27459@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Message-ID: <1992Mar2.203800.13607@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1992 20:38:00 GMT

In article <1992Mar2.031342.27459@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:

>I suggest a moratorium on any discussions that simply tread over
>this old ground, as the last couple of weeks have.  It's amazing
[...]
>If the Chinese room is to be discussed at all, I suggest that
>discussants be required to give some (hopefully novel) *argument* in
[...]
>I gave such an argument a while ago
>with the "fading qualia" thought-experiment (it should be clear
>enough how this applies to the memorization case).

Sure, let's talk about fading-qualia. It doesn't really seem to have any
force against the Chinese room, per se, at all. Instead, it seems to be
directed against Searle's "positive thesis" (as Michael Gemar calls it)
that brain tissue is somehow able to "cause and realize" intentionality.
The two arguments are detachable. If the silcon substitutes for neurons
act "precisely" like neurons (and there is a lot burried int "precisely"
that ultimately needs to be explicated) AND Searle is right about
functionalism, then you will get your qualia at the expense of your
implants not being computers, in the strict sense (i.e. not implementable
on Turing machines). Now this is very little cost as far as I'm concerned,
but I (nor anyone else, I suspect) knows exactly what the silcon substitutes
would do if not just compute functions.

Care to speculate?
Specifically, functionalism and physicalism aren't all the options
available to us.


-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
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