Path: utzoo!attcan!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: <3553@aipna.ed.ac.uk> Date: 24 Nov 90 15:19:27 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> Reply-To: cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) Organization: Dept of AI, Edinburgh University, UK. Lines: 85 In article cw2k+@andrew.cmu.edu (Christopher L. Welles) writes: >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 ... >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? >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. Ok, let me quote Searle's reply to the "robot reply" in the original BBS target article and debate: I see no reason in principle why we couldn't give a machine the capacity to understand English or Chinese, since in an important sense our bodies with our brains are precisely such machines. But ... we could not give such a thing to a machine ... [whose] operation ... is defined soley in terms of computational processes over formally defined elements. As I hope is now clear, he is willing to concede the possibility of consciousness to machines "which have a level of description ... described as the instantiation of a computer program", but NOT to anything whose operation is defined SOLEY in those terms. He uses that little word "solely" in both your quotation and mine: it is the important word. The extra magic ingredient required for intentionality (not necessarily consciousness, but it does no damage to the arguments to make that equation here) Searle does often refer to as "causal powers", but I challenge you to find him saying anything anywhere to substantiate your claim that he thinks these caual powers depend - >>>upon the "stuff" that the computer is made out of. This is (IMHO) an extremely common misunderstanding of Searle, based simply on failure of the imagination, i.e., "I can't imagine what else he could have meant". Your later quotation of Searle's rebuttal of Fodor in support of your thesis in fact begs the question: > "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. You seem to think that Searle's dismissal here of the utility of "outside causal impacts" is equivalent to a dismissal of a functional interpretation of his "causal powers". It isn't. And although you may be correct in saying (I haven't looked back to check) that Fodor's argument is the closest in the original BBS argument to Harnad's symbol grounding point, it is also the case that Harnad would agree with Searle in denying that "the right causal links ... would be sufficient." (though maybe not for the same reasons :-). -- Chris Malcolm cam@uk.ac.ed.aipna 031 667 1011 x2550 Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University 5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK