From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!caen!uunet!news.smith.edu!orourke Wed Oct 14 14:58:50 EDT 1992
Article 7228 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!caen!uunet!news.smith.edu!orourke
>From: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Message-ID: <1992Oct12.130804.18065@sophia.smith.edu>
Organization: Smith College, Northampton, MA, US
References: <26609@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1992Oct11.172208.9206@sophia.smith.edu> <26774@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 13:08:04 GMT
Lines: 24

In article <26774@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:

>Searle's point is that _if_ a computer were to manifest mental
>phenomena ... then these mental phenomena would not have been 
>caused _just_ by the running of a computer program.

I think this is a mischaracterization of Searle's emphasis.
For your phrasing implies that Searle believes that it is quite 
possible that programmed computers have minds; but that
if it so happens that this is the case, it would be because of
the causal powers of the silicon, not by virtue of running
the program.
	But Searle rather emphatically denies that an appropriately
programmed computer will be a mind:  "Any artifact that produced
mental phenomena ... could not do [so] just by running a formal
program."  His statement that "it might be possible to produce
a thinking machine ... out of silicon chips," is more like saying
an artificial silicon brain might be possible, but if so, it wouldn't
be a computer in today's sense of the term.  I don't see that
Searle ever countenances the possibility that *computers* might
manifest mental phenomena, the antecedent of your characterization
of his position.
	Perhaps his new book expands on these issues.  I haven't
read it yet.


