Re: Searle

Max More (maxmore@primenet.com)
Wed, 04 Feb 1998 22:18:32 -0800


At 07:16 PM 2/4/98 -0800, you wrote:
>: Searle's chinese room is designed to show that strong AI can not be true
...
>
>In my humble opinion it shows only that consciousness is complex.

I haven't read all posts on this topic, but in some of the early ones, the
phrase "strong AI" was being used at odds with the accepted usage in
philosophy of mind. There it means not more-than-human AI, but
consciousness being achievable purely through software without having to
worry about the particular physical instantiation. In that sense of "strong
AI", I too have major doubts. I'm not at all convinced that a massive look
up table would be conscious. I would not want to replace my brain with
software based on a lookup table. In practice, I don't expect to have to
worry about this, since I doubt it will be practicable to build a mind in
such a manner.

Max

Max More, Ph.D.
more@extropy.org
http://www.primenet.com/~maxmore
President, Extropy Institute: exi-info@extropy.org, http://www.extropy.org