From: c60c-2gh@web-4f.berkeley.edu (Erik Strickland (Og))
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Reply-To: c60c-2gh@web-4f.berkeley.edu (Erik Strickland (Og))
Organization: ucb
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 19:14:45 GMT

In article <1992Oct12.130804.18065@sophia.smith.edu>, orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
|> In article <26774@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
|> 
|> >Searle's point is that _if_ a computer were to manifest mental
|> >phenomena ... then these mental phenomena would not have been 
|> >caused _just_ by the running of a computer program.
|> 
|> I think this is a mischaracterization of Searle's emphasis.
|> For your phrasing implies that Searle believes that it is quite 
|> possible that programmed computers have minds; but that
|> if it so happens that this is the case, it would be because of
|> the causal powers of the silicon, not by virtue of running
|> the program.

***** The above is very much correct.

|> 	But Searle rather emphatically denies that an appropriately
|> programmed computer will be a mind:  "Any artifact that produced
|> mental phenomena ... could not do [so] just by running a formal
|> program."  His statement that "it might be possible to produce
|> a thinking machine ... out of silicon chips," is more like saying
|> an artificial silicon brain might be possible, but if so, it wouldn't
|> be a computer in today's sense of the term.  I don't see that
|> Searle ever countenances the possibility that *computers* might
|> manifest mental phenomena, the antecedent of your characterization
|> of his position.
|> 	Perhaps his new book expands on these issues.  I haven't
|> read it yet.

	Of all of the people attending this discussion, I am perhaps the most
fortunate, inasmuch as I'm a student at UC Berkeley who has studied under 
Searle for a year and a half. 
	Joseph was absolutely correct in his formulation of Searle's position.
	According to Searle, the mind is a secretion of the brain, which "just
happens" as a result of electrochemical reactions in the brain. At no point is
there any real "information processing" going on in the brain, as "information"
is a meaningless concept without an observer, and (excepting a homunculus) there
is no observer in the brain. The brain in this way is not a computer or
information processing device, but is just a lump of conveniently arranged 
molecules, much like a heart or liver. 
	The original question was this: If I could in some way simulate all of the
electrochemical processes/entities in the brain, such that for all time, the state
of my model was in 1-1 correspondence with the modeled brain, would the simulated
brain have a simulated mind? 
	Searle's position is very much consistent with all of our brain-damaging
experience, and is difficult to counter. It is the actual goo inside your brainpan
that does the work, much as it is the acids/catalysts inside your stomach which
actually digest your food. In both cases, simulation of the physical processes
does nothing more than prove a clever exercise in computer science; in neither case do you get the 'secretion' of the simulated entity, the mind or the digestion.
	Searle says that, should our dogma be incorrect and silicon be able to
secrete mind-stuff in the way that brains do, then great, wow, neat. But you
can't get there through information processing, you can't get there through 
computer science; you can't make a mind out of an arbitrary substance.

	I've found that, in general, people on this newsgroup are very vague
and miss the point quite often. I hope I've done neither. 


	Thanks for listening to me rant,


			-Og