Cogprints

Minds, Machines and Searle

Harnad, Stevan (1989) Minds, Machines and Searle. [Journal (Paginated)]

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Abstract

Searle's celebrated Chinese Room Argument has shaken the foundations of Artificial Intelligence. Many refutations have been attempted, but none seem convincing. This paper is an attempt to sort out explicitly the assumptions and the logical, methodological and empirical points of disagreement. Searle is shown to have underestimated some features of computer modeling, but the heart of the issue turns out to be an empirical question about the scope and limits of the purely symbolic (computational) model of the mind. Nonsymbolic modeling turns out to be immune to the Chinese Room Argument. The issues discussed include the Total Turing Test, modularity, neural modeling, robotics, causality and the symbol-grounding problem.

Item Type:Journal (Paginated)
Keywords:computation, cognition, Turing Test, Chinese Room Argument, symbol grounding, categorisation, consciousness, transduction, sensorimotor processes, artificial intelligence, neural nets, Total Turing Test, modularity, neural modeling, robotics, causality, symbol-grounding problem
Subjects:Psychology > Cognitive Psychology
Computer Science > Robotics
Linguistics > Semantics
Philosophy > Philosophy of Mind
ID Code:1573
Deposited By: Harnad, Stevan
Deposited On:18 Jun 2001
Last Modified:11 Mar 2011 08:54

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