Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!o.gp.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!cw2k+ From: cw2k+@andrew.cmu.edu (Christopher L. Welles) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Searle's Chinese Room Message-ID: Date: 20 Nov 90 05:19:31 GMT References: <16197@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> <3952@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <10297@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> <8bDqHlK00VsLBAOkxp@andrew.cmu.edu> <3525@aipna.ed.ac.uk> Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 90 In-Reply-To: <3525@aipna.ed.ac.uk> In <3525@aipna.ed.ac.uk>cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)writes: >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 understand, 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. In answer to this, let me pull a quote from Searle's original "The Behavioral and Brain Sciences" article: "Ok, but could a digital computer think?" If by "digital computer" we mean anything at all that has a level of description where it can correctly be described as the instantiation of a computer program, then again the answer is, of course, yes, since we are the instantiations of any number of computer programs, and we can think. "But could something think, understand, and so on solely(in italics) in virtue of being a computer with a right sort of program? Could instantiating a program, the right program of course, by itself be a sufficient condition of understanding?" It is possible to interpret your reply in such a way that it does not conflict with this. However, in doing so, it clearly would not conflict with what I was saying. >>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. Let me point out that I did not come to conclusion immediately! By means of several arguments, the chinese room test itself is invalid and worthless.( One of the best I've seen of these is in <27320@cs.yale.edu> by mcdermott-drew@cs.yale.edu (Drew McDermott).) However, the issue of intentionality does not need to rest on this in order to have merit. If interpreted as "symbol grounding" it would be a valid point of discussion. This, is something I had taken into account. But, by virtue that it "could equally well refer to" it is ambiguous. Only later is it shown that this is not what he means. The original BBS article consisted of Searle's original paper, commentary on that paper, and Searle's response to the commentary. In that commentary, the "symbol grounding" idea was most closely represented by Fodor's response. His his reasoning was as follows: It is true that merely instantiating a program is not sufficient for consciousness. It must have some sort of causal connection to objects in the real world. This, however, does not mean that those causal connections can not be built. Thus, it does not depend upon the special biological "stuff" the brain is made out of. Searle's response to this clearly shows that he is not referring to "symbol grounding" when he refers to intentionality: "Fodor agrees with my central thesis that instantiating a program is not a sufficient condition of intentionality. He thinks, however, that if we got the right causal links between the formal symbols and things in the world that would be sufficient. Now there is an obvious objection to this variant of the robot reply that I have made several times: the same thought experiment as before applies to this case. That is, no matter what outside causal impacts there are on the formal tokens, these are not by themselves sufficient to give the tokens any intentional content. No matter what caused the tokens, the agent still doesn't understand Chinese. Let the egg foo yung symbol be causally connected to egg foo yung in any way you like, that connection by itself will never enable that agent to interpret the symbol as meaning egg foo yung." In this, Searle returns to the same mistake that he made with the Chinese room itself, and gives up the only valid point his paper could have possibly made. <<<<< Chris >>>>>