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From: Newman.pasa@XEROX.COM.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.ai
Subject: Re: Searle and understanding
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Date: Fri, 25-Jul-86 13:21:00 EDT
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Posted: Fri Jul 25 13:21:00 1986
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Eyal Mozes quotes from Searle to explain how Searle thinks about human
understanding and its biological nature. I had seen that passage of
Searle's before, and I think that this is a major part of my problem
with Searle. He accepts the biological nature of thought and mind, yet
cannot accept the proposition that a computer can reproduce the
necessary features of these items. I cannot see any reason to believe
that Searle's position is correct. More importantly, I can see many
reasons why his position is incorrect.

Searle uses milk and sugar to illustrate his point. I think that this is
a terrible comparison because milk and sugar are physical products of
biological processes while thought and mind are not. I also think that
Searle's attack on grounds of dualism is rather unfair. Even Searle must
agree that there are physical things and non-physical things in the
world (eg Volkswagens and numbers), and that milk and sugar are members
of the first class while thought and mind are members of the second.
Moreover, Searle's position apparently demands that there are features
of thought and mind that are dependent on features of very low-level
biological processes that make thought and mind happen. What evidence is
there that there are such features?  I don't see that features of the
neurotransmitters (for example) can have an effect at any level other
than their own, particularly since any one biochemical event is unlikely
to have a large effect (my understanding is that large numbers of
biochemical events must occur in concert for anything to be apparent at
higher levels).

Admittedly there is as little evidence for my position as there is for
Searle's, but I think that there is more evidence against Searle than
there is against me. One last point is my paraphrase of John Haugeland's
comment in "Artificial Intelligence - The Very Idea": that brains are
merely symbol processors is a hypothesis and nothing more - until more
solid proof comes along. 

>>Dave