Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!aiai!jeff From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument Message-ID: <253@skye.ed.ac.uk> Date: 10 Mar 89 19:04:15 GMT References: <4298@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <4296@cs.Buffalo.EDU> <4307@cs.Buffalo.EDU> <223@skye.ed.ac.uk> <28207@sri-unix.SRI.COM> Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland Lines: 31 In article <28207@sri-unix.SRI.COM> ellis@unix.sri.com (Michael Ellis) writes: >> Jeff Dalton >> David Sher >>>Does anyone believe that they can build a machine with a soul? It is >>>just as easy to build in Searle's "understanding." >>It's certainly true that it's hard to see what could ever convince >>Searle that anything had understanding. > Then you missed something. Searle is *already convinced* that at least: > 1. Searle has it > 2. Other humans have it Sure, but that's not because he used to think otherwise and someone convinced him he was wrong. Perhaps I should have added "unless the thing uses brains or green slime". Anyway, you haven't said anything about how Searle might be convinced, only that he is *already convinced*. So if I missed something, it must be something else. Consider an example. Searle talks about the "causal powers of the brain". He thinks there's *something* about brains that results in understanding. But he doesn't say anything about what it is. Well, that's reasonable, because we don't know all that much. But the causal powers end up being something we infer from the understanding and not much help as a way to show that something has understanding in the first place. All of this is fine, but in the end it's not clear what might show that green slime, for example, might have the right sort of causal powers.