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From: c89ponga@ida.liu.se (kand. Pontus Gagge)
Subject: Re: Dennett versus Searle
Message-ID: <1995Feb28.170442.21329@ida.liu.se>
Sender: news@ida.liu.se
Organization: CIS Dept, Univ of Linkoping, Sweden
References: <3h8p6e$40t@sunserver.lrz-muenchen.de> <1995Feb10.192629.642@ida.liu.se> <3ik2di$g1c@sunserver.lrz-muenchen.de>
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 1995 17:04:42 GMT
Lines: 33

ua352af@sunmail.lrz-muechen.de (Michael Pietroforte) writes:

>This view surely is consistent with most of Dennett's writings. Can you
>cite a passage in which he expresses this last point explicitly?

Not off-hand. I would argue that if he *did* agree with Searle's
viewpoint, he would surely have stated this explicitly. It would
be a major deviation from his functionalist credo.

>I am not convinced that the cited passage can be read in this way.
>Certainly, Dennett believes that there are different levels of
>description. The question is whether the level of physical
>(physiological) description is important for explaining consciousness.
>In this paragraph he would seem to maintain that a system that is a
>von Neumann machine at the level of physical description ("being
>wired up from the outset that way") isn't conscious, and this is exactly
>Searle's point.

It is quite easy to interpret it as "*a* TM is unconscious". Try!  :-)

Your interpretation would contradict nearly all of Dennett's
writings. Most notably, such a view is impossible to reconcile 
with the Systems Reply to Searle's infamous Chinese Room. 

You might take a look at The Abilities of Men and Machines (collected
in Brainstorms). It does not exactly address this point (it is more
concerned with those who claim Gdel's incompleteness results have
any relevance to l'homme machine), but it does feature, as
illustrations, simulations of conscious entities by TM:s.
--
/--- Ego sum --------\ /------------------------\
! kand. Pontus Gagge  ! c89ponga.und.ida.liu.se !
\---- Enjoyment is an overrated pleasure. ------/
