What can think?: Philosophy Forums

What can think?
Searle's substantial essence

What can think?

welkin rogue
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Posted 05/11/08 - 01:09 AM: Subject: What can think?	#1
I would like to know what people think of Searle’s suggestion that there is a substantial essence relevant to whether a thing can think – or more precisely, possess intentionality. He accuses AI supporters and the whole computational theory of mind as an appeal to a kind of dualism, where minds are ‘abstractable’ to a body of rules or instructions independent of their physical instantiation. He ridicules the position via reductio ad absurdum, showing how these rules could be “programmed into a sequence of water pipes, a set of wind machines…” and asks if such systems are thinking- (or intentionally capable) systems. So essentially he says that computers can’t think because they’re inorganic. What are the special properties of fleshy tissue and biochemicals etc that make the organic alone capable of thinking?

The_Rational_Animal
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Posted 05/11/08 - 01:57 PM:	#2
I think Searle's argumentation here is a bit, say, "off". On interpretation Searle uses the term "causal powers" when referring to the capacities of protoplasmic neurons to produce phenomenal states such as felt sensations, pains, and the like. But even if we accept Searle's account of intentionality as dependent on phenomenal consciousness, the assumption made by his argument - that things of "inorganic physical composition" like silicon chips, "are categorically incapable of causing felt sensations" - still seems to be untenable. The mere fact that mental phenomena such as felt sensations have been, historically speaking, confined to protoplasmic organisms in no way demonstrates that such phenomena could not arise in a nonprotoplasmic system. Such an assertion is on a par with a claim (made in ancient times) that only organic creatures such as birds or insects could fly. Since Searle never explains what sort of biological phenomenon it is, nor does he ever give us a reason to believe there is a property inherent in protoplasmic neural matter that could not, in principle, be replicated in an alternative physical, substrate, even in silicon chips, one can only conclude that the knowledge of the necessary connection between intentionality and protoplasmic embodiment is obtained through some sort of mystical revelation and is not philosophical derived.

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