Re: Conscious of the hard problem

Timothy Bates (tbates@karri.bhs.mq.edu.au)
Wed, 23 Jun 1999 12:41:24 +1000

> At 02:23 PM 22/06/99 -0400, Harvey wrote: 

>>Any thoughts must be preplanned and executed by the human caretakers for the
>>brain. [...]
>>If there is a consciousness, it is contained by all the living humans who
>>are doing the brain modeling.

Damien Broderick <damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> replied > Exactly. This is just Searle's Chinese Room by other means.

Except that Searle comes to exactly the OPPOSITE conclusion. He says that there is no consciousness in this case. He explicitly denies that if a result is computed by parts, then consciousness is a distributed property of those parts.
That is his whole point - that is why he is so bitterly against functionalists like Dennett.

My Favorite net-quote on this is below:

In Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy, ADRIAN MOHAMMED wrote: > I need as much information as possible about Searle's Chinese Room

Jim Balter <jqb@netcom.com> replied:

It's a demonstration that you can't understand the philosophy of the mind merely by virtue of being known as a philosopher of the mind.

;-)

Dr Timothy Bates
Dept Psychology
Macquarie University
Sydney NSW 2109
Australia
ph 61 2 9850 8623
FAX 61 2 9850 8062