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Article 5090 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Bright Air, Brilliant Fire
Message-ID: <1992Apr14.070041.17611@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <1992Apr9.140908.29033@oracorp.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 92 07:00:41 GMT
Lines: 24

In article <1992Apr9.140908.29033@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough) writes:

>This is an area where credentials don't seem to mean much, since the
>best scientists and philosophers (Searle, Penrose, Edelman) don't seem
>to have any more insight than the interested layman.

On the face of it, this evidence points to the opposite conclusion.
Penrose is an excellent physicist but has no credentials as a
philosopher or cognitive scientist, so he does dreadful philosophy and
cognitive science.  Edelman is a good immunologist and neuroscientist
but no philosopher, so he does dreadful philosophy.

Which leaves Searle, who is something of a special case.  Searle is
certainly a good philosopher (perhaps more so in the philosophy of
language than of mind).  I wouldn't call his Chinese-room work bad;
it's wrong, but stimulatingly so.  Taking in itself, the work is
an interesting contribution to the literature.  One can't really
blame Searle for the fact that the argument has been so influential
and therefore so infuriating.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


