Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!venera.isi.edu!smoliar
From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Searle and biology
Message-ID: <14265@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 13 Jul 90 01:16:15 GMT
Sender: news@venera.isi.edu
Reply-To: smoliar@venera.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute
Lines: 21


Before I left on my vacation, Tom Blenko had raised the issue of whether or not
Searle was claiming any superiority of biological implementations over those of
silicon regarding the issue of "understanding."  Unless I am mistaken, he
introduced this claim when he last spoke at UCLA.  His basic claim was that
there was something about the biological substrate which enabled the
implementation of intentionality.  He never said what that "something"
was, but that did not prevent him from asserting that it was absent in
any silicon implementation.  Needless to say, I had trouble buying into
this claim.

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