Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!purdue!iuvax!cogsci!dave
From: dave@cogsci.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Searle and biology
Message-ID: <51408@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Date: 19 Jul 90 06:11:43 GMT
References: <14265@enera.isi.edu> <602@ntpdvp1.UUCP>
Sender: news@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
Reply-To: dave@cogsci.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
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In article <602@ntpdvp1.UUCP> kenp@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Ken Presting) writes:

>Stephen, you are again mistaken.  Searle's PUBLISHED position on this issue
>is clear, unambiguous, and has been repeated in at least three articles.
>
>It is this: We know for a fact that brains think.  We don't know at all 
>whether anything else will ever think.  Nobody in his right mind would deny 
>the first assertion.  That is the extent of the "superiority of biological
>implementations."
>
>You are only obscuring an already difficult issue with such irresponsible 
>hearsay.

This statement of Searle's position does not tell the whole truth.  It
is true that Searle does not claim to have *proved* any privileged role
for biology.  However, his intuitions about the matter are another story.
Check out these excerpts:

"Whatever intentionality is, it is a biological phenomenon, and it is as likely
to be as causally dependent on the specific biochemistry of its origins as
lactation, photosynthesis, or any other biological phenomenon."
                           -- BBS, 1980, p. 424.

"The upshot of this discussion is to remind us of something that we have known
all along: namely, mental states are biological phenomena.  Consciousness,
intentionality, subjectivity and mental causation are all a part of our
biological life history, along with growth, reproduction, the secretion
of bile, and digestion."
                           -- _Minds, Brains and Science_, p. 41.

"Brains are specific biological organs, and their specific biological
properties enable them to cause consciousness and other sorts of mental
phenomena."
                           -- Scientific American, Jan 1990, p. 29.

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