Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!jeff From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Recursive Searles, or what? Message-ID: <1522@skye.ed.ac.uk> Date: 9 Jan 90 19:12:53 GMT References: <12679@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <12702@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <7661@sdcsvax.UCSD.Edu> Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland Lines: 18 In article gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) writes: >If we assume, even so, that there is a ``system'' that understands, >then Penrose, in THE EMPEROR'S NEW MIND, has pointed out that this is >equivalent to postulating a ``mind-stuff'' apart from the physical >entities that exist. This is known as dualism and most AI folk seem >to want to avoid such a viewpoint. It's more like functionalism. (BTW, I'd be interested in comments on Putnam's fairly recent book. Unfortunately, I've forgotten the title. MIT Press, though.) The system supposition is not that the system is some entity made of "mind stuff" that understands. The idea is, roughly, that a mind corresponds to an executing program. Having more than one around is no more dualistic than having more than one process on a 68k. How does Penrose know that Searle can't be the machine that's executing the program? That certainly seems to be what he's doing after he's internalized the Chinese Room.