From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!ames!haven.umd.edu!darwin.sura.net!sgiblab!a2i!pagesat!spssig.spss.com!markrose Wed Oct 14 14:58:55 EDT 1992
Article 7237 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Message-ID: <1992Oct12.185533.6092@spss.com>
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References: <26609@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1992Oct12.170930.9523@news.media.mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 18:55:33 GMT
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In article <1992Oct12.170930.9523@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media.mit.edu 
(Marvin Minsky) writes:
>In article <26609@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>>Contrary to popular opinion, even Searle of Chinese Roon fame agrees with 
>>that, as he made plain in the Jan 1990 edition of Scientific American.
>
>That a mere machine could think?  I don't remember any such statement
>by Searle.

How about this, from the first paragraph of said article (I keep a copy
handy for use in comp.ai.philo polemics):

  "Can a machine think?  Can a machine have conscious thoughts in exactly
   the same sense that you and I have?  If by 'machine' one means a physical
   system capable of performing certain functions (and what else can one
   mean?), then humans are machines of a special biological kind, and humans
   can think, and so of course machines can think.  And, for all we know, it
   might be possible to produce a thinking machine out of different materials
   altogether-- say, out of silicon chips or vacuum tubes.  Maybe it will
   turn out to be impossible, but we certainly do not know that yet."

In _Minds, Brains, and Science_ he adds green slime to the array of 
potentially mind-causing materials.


