Abstract

This dissertation asks whether a rhetorical contextualism can offer insights into the nature of and the prospects for moving beyond impasse, particularly in intellectual dialogue that includes thought experiments. I begin in the first chapter by offering a rationale for a rhetorical contextualist approach to argument analysis and for the selection of a test case, the Chinese Room thought experiment. In the second chapter I present from the history of automata and computers some of the antecedents of this thought experiment to trace the development of the relevant themes of the related controversy and to offer a description of the data of this analysis---109 variations on the Chinese room. In the third chapter I offer a comprehensive analysis of these variations using the contextualist method I developed. Finally, in thelast chapter I offer some conclusions that this analysis suggests for the conduct of intellectual controversies in general, for the conduct of the particular controversy over the issue of consciousness illustrated by the Chinese Room thought experiments, and for the analysis of the genre of thought experiments. Since the analysis in this dissertation is itself a part of an intellectual controversy, I include at the end some attempts at self-reflexive analysis in view of the conclusions reached in this dissertation about intellectual controversy