Re: Does Searle's "Chinese Room" argument imply that consciousness is non-scientific?

On Sep 26, 1:34 pm, "J.A. Legris" <jaleg...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
As he puts it, some materials in which
an algorithm might be implemented have the "causal power" to produce
thinking, and others do not. He does not provide a criterion for
deciding which things do and which do not have the "causal power" to
produce thinking. That is a matter for future investigation..."

Here I would disagree, of course if you define thinking as occurring
only in biological systems then that immediately rules out artifical
intelligence! Surely it is begging the question in the extreme to
prove artificial thinking is impossible by defining intelligence as
being of solely non-artificial origin?

I hasten to add that this notion of "causal power" is not some form of
vitalism or animism. To my mind it is the tacit acceptance that
thinking is an activity of extremely complex biochemical systems that
arose only after billions of years of tuning and tinkering and
experimenting (with their own lives!). The resulting information
embedded in the structure of every living thing reflects the
properties of the underlying materials and the ancient history of each
species. Syntax is an afterthought.

--
Joe

If the issue is one of architecture then fair enough, one might
envision that "thinking" can only emerge in high-noise, massively
parallel systems, one can pinpoint the influence of chemical and
electrical signaling, but at its heart such a system is in no way tied
to an organic implementation. I see no reason to suspect that thinking
systems are tied to organic architectures - I accept and endorse the
idea that the notion of thought might not emerge in a high-speed,
serial, model of the brain, but if a simulation is set up in such a
way as to mimic the brains hardware I fail to see how it wouldn't
prove Searle wrong. I suspect the argument owes more to the its
proponents misconceptions of "what a computer is" than to its
opponents misconceptions of "what thinking is".

To take this to the extreme if we were to construct a brain from
organic materials, using organic methodology would it be any less
artificial than a brain made of doped silicon?

.

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