John Searle

Notes

John Searle (born 1932), American philosopher of mind and language. Author of the Chinese Room argument against the claim that running the right program is sufficient for understanding, and of "biological naturalism", the view that consciousness is caused by brains the way digestion is caused by stomachs. I regard the second view as vitalism for the mind; see Substrate Independence.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Searle

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Consciousness

On machines. If consciousness is a matter of organisation rather than substrate, there is no principled reason a non-biological system could not be conscious. John Searle's Chinese Room does not show otherwise; it shows that the man in the…

Substrate Independence

"Biological naturalism" is vitalism for the mind. John Searle holds that brains produce consciousness through "specific causal powers" which a program running on a different substrate lacks. Asked what those powers are, the answer amounts…

Functionalism

The standard objections are John Searle's Chinese Room, the "absent qualia" worry that a system could have all the right functional states and no experience (Philosophical zombies), and the "China brain" (a billion people with radios imple…

Chinese Room

The Chinese Room is a thought experiment proposed by philosopher John Searle in 1980, in his paper "Minds, Brains, and Programs".

Neuron Replacement

John Searle accepts the setup and bites the bullet: the subject's experience fades while their behaviour stays the same, and they are simply wrong about it. Chalmers' reply, which I share, is that this makes the subject's introspective rep…