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From: blenko-tom@CS.YALE.EDU (Tom Blenko)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: No more Chinese rooms, please?
Message-ID: <25487@cs.yale.edu>
Date: 29 Jun 90 20:17:57 GMT
References: <25445@cs.yale.edu> <1990Jun26.140923.22895@cs.umn.edu> <25457@cs.yale.edu> <3431@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
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Reply-To: blenko-tom@CS.YALE.EDU (Tom Blenko)
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept, New Haven CT  06520-2158
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In article <3431@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> jim@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Jim Ruehlin, Cognitologist domesticus) writes:
|You may be carrying the metaphor of the city a little too far.  What's 
|the corelation between "civic pride" and something that happens in
|neurons (it's something intangible, I assume, but what?).  And simply
|because cities have "civic pride" is no reason to assume that neurons
|have a coresponding phenomenon.

The point about civic pride is that it ultimately is just a disposition
shared by the inhabitants of a city. Concrete manifestations, (e.g.
parks) may be taken as evidence for civic pride, but they can arise in
the absence of civic pride, and they need not arise in the presence of
civic pride.

Searle's mind/brain hypothesis is that mental states (e.g.
consciousness, hunger) are simply labels for collections of neural
states.  So, just as it is difficult to talk about the civic pride of a
"city" lacking nearly-human inhabitants, it is difficult to talk about
the "hunger" of a system defined by a program running on an arbitrary
processor.  Mental states are taken as a necessary property of a
mind, artificial or otherwise.

|In any case, we can linguistically define "civic pride".  It has certain
|effects and, presumably, causes.  It manafests itself in a certain way.
|As long as we can define a property like this, we can simulate it or
|duplicate it.

Searle thinks this view represents a major (and commonplace)
misunderstanding (so do I).  Let's accept that you can linguistically
define "civic pride".  Now, how do you duplicate it without using
humans as elements of the system duplicating it?

There are lots of other examples. You can simulate the aerodynamic
properties of an aircraft design -- but there are always details
missing, and some of them may prove critical to the aircraft's
performance. Similarly, if you can provide an accurate simulation of
the economy, which simply represents the aggregate behavior of a group
of more-or-less independent actors, you can easily become the first
billionaire on your block.

	Tom