Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!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: <3525@aipna.ed.ac.uk> Date: 18 Nov 90 18:15:46 GMT References: <16197@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> <3952@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <10297@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> <8bDqHlK00VsLBAOkxp@andrew.cmu.edu> Reply-To: cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) Organization: Dept of AI, Edinburgh University, UK. Lines: 44 In article <8bDqHlK00VsLBAOkxp@andrew.cmu.edu> cw2k+@andrew.cmu.edu (Christopher L. Welles) writes: >Just thought I should point out. Searle did make it clear that "formal >systems", computers, could be conscious. He emphasized the fact that >humans were such systems. No. He said that machines could underatand, that we were no more than biological machines, but denied that a computer running any program would be able to do this, on the grounds that in this last case ALL that is going on is syntactical, and you can't get semantics into a syntactic process by whatever elaborations of syntactic manipulation. >His main thesis went something to the effect of: That there mere >instantiation of a program could not be in itself, sufficient for for >consciousness. In this, he is saying that consciousness somehow depends >upon the "stuff" that the computer is made out of. Lots of people unfamiliar with philosophy of mind imagine that this is what Searle's "causal powers" arguments comes down to -- the particular stuff. Well, it is true that that is one possibility, but Searle, and philosophers in general, do not mean "causal powers" in this context to be taken so simplistically. "Causal powers" could equally well refer to the kind of elaborate symbol grounding mechanisms espoused by Stevan Harnad, "symbol grounding" being another short hand phrase (but a slightly more transparent one) for the abracadabra (or "causal powers") which permits semantics to perfuse the otherwise purely syntactic. >A major problem with the commentaries is that almost no one >really understood all that Searle was saying. There's a lot of it about.... >What he actually said was just too ridiculous. Searle talks about computers in language which to computer scientists is alien, often naive, and sometimes wrong. Nevertheless, his central point, that you can't get semantics out of syntax, is a very important theoretical point for AI and cognitive science, and one which very few of those who like to laugh at his computational solecisms manage to grasp, let alone address. -- Chris Malcolm cam@uk.ac.ed.aipna 031 667 1011 x2550 Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University 5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK