Re: When Humans are Obsolete (MSNBC)

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
23 Mar 1999 19:02:44 +0100

"Lee Daniel Crocker" <lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net (none)> writes:

> > There are several critiques of these views, such as the devastating
> > counter-argument of philosopher John Searle of UC Berkeley, ...
> > None of the recent books grapple with this critique, possibly
> > because it is so difficult to refute.
>
> ...Or possibly because Hofstadter, Dennett, and others have so
> thoroughly demolished Searle's fallacies that nobody has to take
> them seriously anymore?

It seems like a lot of people think Searle "killed" the area with his apparently elegant arguments, while of course most people in the area regard Searly as silly. After hearing Searle speak to a group of neuroscientists, I can understand it. He was wonderfully persuasive, and to a non computer-scientist what he said most likely sounded very reasonable. Meanwhile, I was totally unconvinced about his anti-AI arguments (he had some other good points, the man is not 100% evil :-)

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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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