[Wittrs] Re: Who beat Kasparov?
- From: "jrstern" <jrstern@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 23:10:28 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Gordon Swobe <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> --- On Fri, 3/19/10, SWM <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> "Historically, scientific developments in the West that have treated humans
> as just a part of the ordinary physical, biological order have often been
> opposed by various rearguard actions. Copernicus and Galileo were opposed
> because they denied that the earth was the center of the universe; Darwin was
> opposed because he claimed that humans had descended from the lower animals.
> It is best to see strong AI as one of the last gasps of this anti-scientific
> tradition, for it denies that there is anything essentially physical and
> biological about the human mind. The mind according to strong AI is
> independent of the brain. [Strong AI is thereby dualistic -gts]
>
> -Searle, "Is the Brain's Mind a Computer Program?"
He sets up his own "strong AI" as a strawman and knocks it down.
"It is best to see", indeed.
The knock against AI is that it is atheoretical, totally operationalist, trial
and error, not that it has some theory that may be right or wrong.
Let me state it more clearly: the mind, according to strong AI, must be hosted
on some kind of mechanical system. With which point Searle agrees, while
somehow asserting that electronic computers are the wrong kind of mechanical
system and the brain is the right kind of mechanical system. Insofar as anyone
ever did think that the mechanical realization was not necessary or the point
of the exercise, I would agree with Searle.
--
I still challenge anyone to state on what it was that Searle got it into his
head that anyone thought that syntax might be sufficient for semantics. Come
on, it's not that hard a question. Searle is just a little precious for not
making it clear in 1980, or 1983, or since.
Josh
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