Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!lll-winken!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aipna!cam From: cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Searle's Chinese Room Message-ID: <3488@aipna.ed.ac.uk> Date: 13 Nov 90 23:24:59 GMT References: <16197@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> <3952@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <10297@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> Reply-To: cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) Organization: Dept of AI, Edinburgh University, UK. Lines: 33 In article <10297@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> larryc@poe.jpl.nasa.gov (Larry Carroll) writes: >It would be interesting to ask Searle if he thinks that an alien creature >with a base in an entirely different biology could be intelligent or have >consciousness. He answered that in 1980 in the replies to his original BBS target article criticism, when he said: We need to keep reminding ourselves over and over: Cognition is a biological phenomenon - as biological as digestion, photosynthesis, lactation, or the secretion of bile. We might do any of one of these in an artificial medium removed from normal biochemistry, but we couldn't do any one of them by pure syntax. Somewhere else I can't remember he quite explicitly said that a computer couldn't be made to think, but a machine could -- after all what were we but biological machines? So he certainly doesn't deny the possibility of cognition to robots or Martians, just automated syntax shufflers. I don't mean to attack Larry Carroll here, but there are too many posters in this thread who haven't read much (or any) Searle, quite apart from the young twits who say "I haven't read any of ... but it seems to me ... etc." If you want to know what Searle thought don't read this newsgroup! Read Searle! He's not as stupid as most of those who disagree with him :-) -- Chris Malcolm cam@uk.ac.ed.aipna 031 667 1011 x2550 Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University 5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK