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From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and consciousness
References: <D0CsqL.9w@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <3bvu7b$i92@mp.cs.niu.edu> <D0ELLI.3GA@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
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Organization: University of Edinburgh
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 1994 22:23:10 GMT
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In article <D0ELLI.3GA@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

>(BTW, I was just looking through some c.ai.phil archives and found
>McDermott saying Searle's arguments would have been very different
>if he'd ever taken a course in operating systems.  I haven't found
>any elaboration or expansion of this remark, however.)

It's a not uncommon view. My guess is that what McDermott objected to
was Searle's constant use of the phrase "running a program" when it is
obvious to the computationally well-educated that there are things
that operating systems can do which programs can't, i.e., the full
capabilities of a computer are not accessible to one program. Any
computer science student should be able to explain why you would be
unable to make a robot's mind/brain out of a computer running a
program, any why you could if it was a computer running an operating
system running dozens of shell scripts potentially running hundreds of
programs.

We conventionally do Searle the honour of supposing that if he were
better educated computationally, then he would have used a more
appropriate generic term instead of "program", such as "software".
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
"The mind reigns, but does not govern" -- Paul Valery
