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From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: Penrose and Searle (was Re: Roger Penrose's fixed ideas)
Message-ID: <1994Dec6.195116.3951@news.media.mit.edu>
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References: <jqbD02yo1.35B@netcom.com> <786566258snz@michaels.demon.co.uk> <jqbD0Dtr6.J0E@netcom.com>
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 1994 19:51:16 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.skeptic:97311 comp.ai.philosophy:23268 sci.philosophy.meta:15352

In article <jqbD0Dtr6.J0E@netcom.com> jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter) writes:
>In article <786566258snz@michaels.demon.co.uk>,


Jim Balter attacked Searle's proposed  'reductio ad absurdum':
>>
>>    "But now if we are trying to take seriously the idea that the
>>    "brain is a digital computer, we get the uncomfortable result
>>    "that we could make a system that does just what the brain does
>>    "out of pretty much anything.  [Including] cats and  mice and
>>    "cheese or levers or water pipes or pigeons ...

by criticising "uncomfortable result" and discussing the impracticability
of building computers out of cheese.

Rodney York <books@michaels.demon.co.uk> replied:

>>Instead of worrying about seriousness and comfort and mice, the meat of
>>Searle's statement should be considered, and the fat and window-dressing,
>>unpalatable as I agree that they are, ignored:
>>I suggest that when discussing opposing viewpoints with the intention of
>>discovering the truth (rather than of winning a political debate), instead of
>>seeking and attacking weaknesses in the other's argument, one should
>>strengthen it as much as possible and then attack the strong argument (I
>>learnt this from Sir Karl Popper).

Balter retorted:
>
>I considered the "strong" argument to be obvious from the argument given,
>and obviously fallacious.  I am more concerned with problems for the AI
>community when arguments as shoddy as Searle's are widely taken as valid,
>and when someone who presents such shoddy arguments is taken so seriously.
>After all, Von Daniken and Creationists are not taken seriously by the
>scientific community except as sociological threats.

I can't agree more.  Geez, this used to be a really stimulating group.
It seems to me, with Jim, that Searle's arguments, however fancily
dressed up, end up by appealing to forms of "I feel uncomfortable
whenever anyone proposes that anything but brains could do (or
feel) what brains do."  So I share his concern (and embarrassment)
that this community takes it seriously. 

I wonder if there was any such concern when Turing showed that any
computer could do what any other computer could do.  Certainly, some
people were amazed when -- was it Edmund Berkeley who produced "Geniac"
in the early '50s.  But no one was surprised, but only impressed, when
Danny Hillis made one of sticks and strings.

It would be better for York to say what he thinks is is the meat of
the argument -- which, so far as I can see, is precisely what Balter
said it is: Searle's articulate expression of incrededulity and discomfort.
(I'm assuming that Searle actually said what that quote above says.
Is this correct?)
