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Article 1552 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle (was Re: Daniel Dennett (was Re: Comme
Message-ID: <1991Nov24.195230.5843@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 25 Nov 91 00:52:29 GMT
References: <1991Nov14.223348.4076@milton.u.washington.edu> <MATT.91Nov24000158@physics.berkeley.edu>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
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In article <MATT.91Nov24000158@physics.berkeley.edu> 
matt@physics.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern) writes:

MA:
>  [...] Searle's argument sounds more limited at first than it really
>is.  The point of his "Chinese room" argument, for example, is that
>symbolic manipulation cannot be thinking.  He makes it clear, however,
>that in his opinion a digital computer cannot do anything other than
>symbolic manipulation.  (And I believe that in one of his seminars
>here, he extended this to any digital circuit.  I heard this
>second-hand, though, so perhaps you shouldn't take it too seriously.)

Not so: it is that *syntactical* manipulation cannot be thinking.

MA:
>It isn't terribly clear to me what kind of system could possibly do
>anything other than symbolic manipulation, defined so expansively.
>This argument makes me nervous just because it is so terribly broad:
>if an argument seems to apply to everything, it suggests to me that
>there is a logical flaw in it somewhere.

A symbol is an iconic or a substitutive sign, something that stands for
something else, *aliquid stat pro aliquo*.  A C function is a symbol
standing for an assembly language algorithm, and, eventually, for a
sequence of machine language instructions, in virtue of your system's
compilers.  Pray tell, what part of the computer hardware or software could
make it stand for something outside the machine, as signs used by humans
stand for things in virtue of their meanings?

MA:
>Unless Searle can explain very clearly just what it is about the human
>brain that makes his argument fail to apply to it, I don't think that
>his case can be considered proven.  

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't seem to have read Searle.  Instead
of wasting your and everybody else's time discussing something you are
unacquainted with, why don't you try to concentrate on answering the simple
question formulated above?


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