Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ogicse!ucsd!ames!lll-winken!tristan!loren
From: loren@tristan.llnl.gov (Loren Petrich)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Hayes vs. Searle
Message-ID: <61667@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Date: 14 Jun 90 21:08:22 GMT
References: <16875@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2629@skye.ed.ac.uk> <3204@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <31624@ut-emx.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV
Reply-To: loren@tristan.UUCP (Loren Petrich)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lines: 63

In article <31624@ut-emx.UUCP> churchh@ut-emx.UUCP (Henry Churchyard) writes:
>In article <3204@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> Jim Ruehlin writes:
>
>>According to Searle in the Chinese Room paper, the difference is that
>>human brain tissue has some "magical" (my word) quality that provides for
>>intelligence/understanding/causitive powers, while mere silicon doesn't.
>
>>It seems to me that this is the real point of his paper - brain mass is
>>different from silicon mass in some fundamental way.  There's some
>>molecular/atomic/?? quality or structure that makes brain mass causitive 
>>and silicon not.  He may not have intended this, but thats what it comes
>>down to, and it seems patently silly.  There was no evidence for this when
>>he wrote his paper, and there still isn't.
>
>    What about the Penrose book (_The_Emperor's_New_Mind_, 1989),
>where he argues that brain tissue might be different because of
>quantum mechanical effects.  I'm not saying that this position is
>necessarily correct, but the argument has been seriously made.

	Every time I see people invoke "quantum effects" in a context
like this, I am tempted to puke. Quantum effects are essentially
damped out at the length/time scales at which brain components
operate. And this "standpoint of the observer" has (I'm sure) been
misunderstood. All it means is that quantum systems are inevitably
affected by attempts to observe them, and not by the presence of some
mystical "observer". Quantum-mechanical effects will not make ESP
possible, for example (which is what some people seem to think).

	I have not read Penrose's book, but I am not impressed by what
he seems to be arguing for -- something like Searle's position that we
have some mystical ability to think that can't be duplicated in a
computer.

	There is the curious Searle/Penrose argument to the effect
that the simulation of thought is not thought. But how does one tell
the difference? I think that the essence of Searle's "Chinese Room"
argument is "I don't find any mind inside, so it cannot be thinking."
But how does one tell?

	A challenge for the Searle/Penrose school of thought is:

	How can they tell that other people can think? According to
their argument, you can't. After all, they claim that what seems like
thought may only be a simulation of thought, which is supposedly
different, and perhaps what goes on in other people's minds is just a
simulation.

	And I think that this challenge is what the Turing Test is all
about.

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