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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article (was: Roger Penro
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Date: Thu, 17 Nov 1994 19:41:50 GMT
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In article <push-1611941848460001@mind.mit.edu>,
Pushpinder Singh <push@mit.edu> wrote:
>jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) wrote:
>> Even Searle allows that humans are machanisms.  He just thinks
>> it matter what the mechanism is, not just the externally observable
>> behavior.
>
>That's simply the anti-behaviorist stance.  I think Searle's actual
>position is something rather silly and far more extreme...

And why do you think Searle's position differs from what Jeff stated?
Jeff's summary is virtually a restatement of Searle's own words in his
famous _Scientific American_ article:

  "If by 'machine' ones means a physical system capable of performing
  certain functions..., then humans are machines of a special biological
  kind, and humans 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."

What he contests is the idea that thinking is *solely* due to a computational
process (that is, in Jeff's terms, that the mechanism doesn't matter).

Now, the arguments Searle uses to *justify* this conclusion are highly
debatable, but Jeff's statement seems to be a very fair statement of
his basic position.
