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From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Sc--nce Attack (self-awareness)
Message-ID: <699@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Dec-69 18:59:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.699
Posted: Wed Dec 31 18:59:59 1969
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Oct-85 07:45:43 EDT
References: <45200016@hpfcms.UUCP> <1605@pyuxd.UUCP> <491@spar.UUCP> <1635@pyuxd.UUCP> <1128@ames.UUCP> <514@spar.UUCP> <1680@pyuxd.UUCP> <541@spar.UUCP>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 40


[Not food]

In article <541@spar.UUCP> ellis@max.UUCP (Michael Ellis) writes:
>    Excerpts from `Minds, Brains, Programs': [by John Searle]
>
>	The problem with a brain simulator is that it is simulating the
>	wrong things about the brain. As long as it only simulates the
>	formal structure of the sequence of neural firings at synapses, it
>	won't have simulated what matters about the brain, namely its causal
>	properties, its ability to produce intentional states.

This seems to me to be a rather large jump.  I would assert that such a
simulation simulates exactly what matters about the brain, namely its causal
properties, its ability to produce intentional states.  What are these things
that a simulation of the neural firings fails to capture them?

>	...
>	No one would suppose that we could produce milk and sugar by running
>	a computer simulation of the formal sequences in lactation and
>	photosythesis; but where the mind is concerned, many people are
>	willing to believe in such a miracle, because of ... a deep and
>	abiding dualism: the mind they suppose is a matter of specific
>	material causes in a way that milk and sugar are not.

But no one would deny that we could produce [a performance of] a piece of
music by having a computer generate the vibrations in the air which exactly
match those of a real performance.  It is not necessary to use the actual
instruments of the original performance.

The only dualism I believe in [in this context] is that between physical
substance and information.  The essence of milk and sugar is their substance;
the essence of a mind or a piece of music is its structure.

>    Nope. But science forges ever onward, philosophical and psychological
>    speculation leading the way.

... or following behind.

Frank Adams                           ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108