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

J.A. Legris says...

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cfs/472_html/Intro/NYT_Intro/History/SearleChinese.html

"...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..."

The problem is that it isn't susceptible to future investigation.
How can you know whether something has the "causal power" to produce
thinking, if there is a distinction between something *really*
thinking, and behaving as *if* it is thinking?

That's what makes the question unscientific and ultimately
sterile. You can certainly spin out endless philosophical
theories of what causes consciousness, but if you can't
test any of those theories, then there is no hope of correcting
mistakes. There is no hope for progress in a scientific sense.

In my opinion, there is nothing of value lost by focusing on
the more tractable question of: how is it possible for a physical
system to behave in ways that humans do? Is it possible to build
a robot that can function as a human (or come close enough)?

Of course, answering these "engineering" questions doesn't
answer the philosophical question of what is the ultimate
nature of one's own wonderful mind. But can't people just
be content with their own unique wonderfulness, and let it
go at that?

--
Daryl McCullough
Ithaca, NY

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