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From: kenp@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Ken Presting)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Searle and biology
Summary: Searle's view on biology is not simplistic, but it is irrelevant
Message-ID: <610@ntpdvp1.UUCP>
Date: 23 Jul 90 16:32:50 GMT
References: <14265@enera.isi.edu> <602@ntpdvp1.UUCP> <51408@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Organization: SNA Solutions Inc., Contract Programming Group
Lines: 69

In article <51408@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>, dave@cogsci.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
> In article <602@ntpdvp1.UUCP> kenp@ntpdvp1.UUCP (Ken Presting) writes:
> 
> > . .   Searle's PUBLISHED position on this issue is:
> >. . . 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."
> 
> 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:

Dave, I hope you will agree that no argument against AI based on the 
superiority of biological implementations could have much interest, and that
we'll get further with the CR if we drop the issue of biology.

But I don't want to leave the impression that Searle is promoting just his
intuitions, or that he has a hidden vitalist agenda.  So here are some more
quotes:

> 
> "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.

Same article, right after the "Many Mansions" reply:

   Perhaps other physical and chemical processes could produce exactly these
   effects ... That is an empirical question, rather like the question whether
   photosynthesis can be done by something with a chemistry different from 
   that of chlorophyll.

> 
> "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.
>

Same book, same page:

   Of course, some other system might cause mental processes using entirely
   different chemical or biochemical features from those the brain in fact
   uses.

 
> "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.
>

Same article, same page:

   As a matter of fact, cognition is a biological phenomenon: mental 
   states and processes are caused by brain processes.  This does not
   imply that only a biological system could think ...


Searle is not a vitalist ideologue, nor is he a Cartesian reactionary.
He is just another guy with another argument, just like the rest of us.


Ken Presting  ("Ad Calculem")