Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!sri-unix!ellis
From: ellis@unix.SRI.COM (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Where might CR understanding come from (if it exists)
Message-ID: <28867@sri-unix.SRI.COM>
Date: 22 Mar 89 04:10:47 GMT
References: <Mar.4.00.45.52.1989.4435@elbereth.rutgers.edu> <9560@megaron.arizona.edu> <2568@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <4079@xyzzy.UUCP> <2599@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <4275@xyzzy.UUCP>
Reply-To: ellis@unix.sri.com (Michael Ellis)
Organization: SRI, Menlo Park, CA.
Lines: 19

> Wayne A. Throop

>The systems reply is that Searle-plus-the-rules *does* understand.

     That requires a leap of faith I'm willing to make for other
     humans, animals (and martians should they arrive), but not
     for an artifact whose design fails to include whatever
     relevant causes there may be to consciousness itself.

>In fact, the whole CR argument is a simple and blatant appeal to
>anthropomorphism, an anecdote with no force of formal reasoning behind
>it.  It doesn't "prove" anything at all, and convinces only those
>who already agree with its disguised anthropocentric premises.

    What "anthropocentric" premises might those be? That subjective
    experience and intentional states with semantic content are real?
    That the subject under study is the human mind? 

-michael