Abstract
Considerations of personal identity bear on John Searle's Chinese Room argument, and on the opposed position that a computer itself could really understand a natural language. In this paper I develop the notion of a virtual person, modelled on the concept of virtual machines familiar in computer science. I show how Searle's argument, and J. Maloney's attempt to defend it, fail. I conclude that Searle is correct in holding that no digital machine could understand language, but wrong in holding that artificial minds are impossible: minds and persons are not the same as the machines, biological or electronic, that realize them.
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Cole, D. Artificial intelligence and personal identity. Synthese 88, 399–417 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413555
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413555