From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!uknet!edcastle!cam Wed Oct 14 14:58:41 EDT 1992
Article 7215 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Message-ID: <26774@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 11 Oct 92 20:23:59 GMT
References: <BARRY.92Oct6151915@chezmoto.ai.mit.edu> <26609@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1992Oct11.172208.9206@sophia.smith.edu>
Organization: Edinburgh University
Lines: 40

In article <1992Oct11.172208.9206@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>In article <26609@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>>In article <BARRY.92Oct6151915@chezmoto.ai.mit.edu> barry@chezmoto.ai.mit.edu (Barry Kort) writes:

>>>Daniel Dennett ... saw no reason
>>>why intelligence and consciousness could not reside in a sufficiently
>>>powerful computer processor.

>> ... this is hardly controversial. Contrary to popular
>>opinion, even Searle of Chinese Roon fame agrees with that.

>It seems to me that Dennett and Searle are in irreconcilable opposition 
>over this issue, as Dennett made clear in "Consciousness Explained" [p.439].  

>what do Dennett and Searle agree on? 

They see no reason that intelligence and consciousness could not
reside in a machine in general, and in a computer specifically. They
are both materialists, and they both consider that human beings are no
more than complex biological machines. They are also aware that the
brain is quite likely to be the organ of mind, that the brain performs
(among other things) complex information processing tasks, and they
both agree that complex information processing (which can be done by
computers running programs) may well be crucially _involved_ in mental
phenomena. This much is simply the position that a well-educated
scientific materialist -- which they both claim to be -- must start
from.

Searle's point is that _if_ a computer were to manifest mental
phenomena (he argues mainly for understanding, but it is clear that he
considers the argument to apply to mental phenomema in general) then
these mental phenomena would not have been caused _just_ by the
running of a computer program. Dennet considers that this insistence
of Searle's that mental phenomena _must_ derive from some essentially
non-algorithmic process, Searle's famous "causal powers", is a kind of
crypto-dualism.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205


