John R. Searle has recently observed that something might instantiate a Chinese??understanding? computer program without having any understanding of Chinese. He thinks that this implies that instantiating such a program is ?never by itself a sufficient condition of intentionality?. I show that this phrase is incoherent, and that all that follows is that instantiating such a program is not in every case a sufficient condition for the given intentionality. But the conclusion to Searle's argument, thus revised, is neither new nor (...) significant; Searle's arguments merely raise old issues in new clothing. (shrink)

As Louisiana and Cuba emerged from slavery in the late nineteenth century, each faced the question of what rights former slaves could claim. Degrees of Freedom compares and contrasts these two societies in which slavery was destroyed by war, and citizenship was redefined through social and political upheaval. Both Louisiana and Cuba were rich in sugar plantations that depended on an enslaved labor force. After abolition, on both sides of the Gulf of Mexico, ordinary people-cane cutters and cigar workers, laundresses (...) and labor organizers-forged alliances to protect and expand the freedoms they had won. But by the beginning of the twentieth century, Louisiana and Cuba diverged sharply in the meanings attributed to race and color in public life, and in the boundaries placed on citizenship. Louisiana had taken the path of disenfranchisement and state-mandated racial segregation; Cuba had enacted universal manhood suffrage and had seen the emergence of a transracial conception of the nation. What might explain these differences? Moving through the cane fields, small farms, and cities of Louisiana and Cuba, Rebecca Scott skillfully observes the people, places, legislation, and leadership that shaped how these societies adjusted to the abolition of slavery. The two distinctive worlds also come together, as Cuban exiles take refuge in New Orleans in the 1880s, and black soldiers from Louisiana garrison small towns in eastern Cuba during the 1899 U.S. military occupation. Crafting her narrative from the words and deeds of the actors themselves, Scott brings to life the historical drama of race and citizenship in postemancipation societies. (shrink)

John Searle's Speech Acts and Expression and Meaning developed a highly original and influential approach to the study of language. But behind both works lay the assumption that the philosophy of language is in the end a branch of the philosophy of the mind: speech acts are forms of human action and represent just one example of the mind's capacity to relate the human organism to the world. The present book is concerned with these biologically fundamental capacities, and, though third (...) in the sequence, in effect it provides the philosophical foundations for the other two. Intentionality is taken to be the crucial mental phenomenon, and its analysis involves wide-ranging discussions of perception, action, causation, meaning, and reference. In all these areas John Searle has original and stimulating views. He ends with a resolution of the 'mind-body' problem. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam deals in this book with some of the most fundamental persistent problems in philosophy: the nature of truth, knowledge and rationality. His aim is to break down the fixed categories of thought which have always appeared to define and constrain the permissible solutions to these problems.

My pocket calculator (Cal) has certain arithmetical abilities: it seems Cal calculates. That calculating is thinking seems equally untendentious. Yet these two claims together provide premises for a seemingly valid syllogism whose conclusion -- Cal thinks -- most would deny. I consider several ways to avoid this conclusion, and find them mostly wanting. Either we ourselves can't be said to think or calculate if our calculation-like performances are judged by the standards proposed to rule out Cal; or the standards -- (...) e.g., autonomy and self-consciousness -- make it impossible to verify whether anything or anyone (save myself) meets them. While appeals to the intentionality of thought or the unity of minds provide more credible lines of resistance, available accounts of intentionality and mental unity are insufficiently clear and warranted to provide very substantial arguments against Cal's title to be called a thinking thing. Indeed, considerations favoring granting that title are more formidable than generally appreciated. (shrink)

Harnad 's proposed "robotic upgrade" of Turing's Test, from a test of linguistic capacity alone to a Total Turing Test of linguistic and sensorimotor capacity, conflicts with his claim that no behavioral test provides even probable warrant for attributions of thought because there is "no evidence" [p.45] of consciousness besides "private experience" [p.52]. Intuitive, scientific, and philosophical considerations Harnad offers in favor of his proposed upgrade are unconvincing. I agree with Harnad that distinguishing real from "as if" thought on the (...) basis of consciousness testing as sufficient warrant for mental attribution) has the skeptical consequence Harnad accepts -- "there is in fact no evidence for me that anyone else but me has a mind" [p.45]. I disagree with his acceptance of it! It would be better to give up the neo-Cartesian "faith" [p.52] in private conscious experience underlying Harnad 's allegiance to Searle's controversial Chinese Room "Experiment" than give up all claim to know others think. It would be better to allow that Turing's Test evidences -- even strongly evidences -- thought. (shrink)

Explaining the mind by building machines with minds runs into the other-minds problem: How can we tell whether any body other than our own has a mind when the only way to know is by being the other body? In practice we all use some form of Turing Test: If it can do everything a body with a mind can do such that we can't tell them apart, we have no basis for doubting it has a mind. But what is (...) "everything" a body with a mind can do? Turing's original "pen-pal" version (the TT) only tested linguistic capacity, but Searle has shown that a mindless symbol-manipulator could pass the TT undetected. The Total Turing Test (TTT) calls for all of our linguistic and robotic capacities; immune to Searle's argument, it suggests how to ground a symbol manipulating system in the capacity to pick out the objects its symbols refer to. No Turing Test, however, can guarantee that a body has a mind. Worse, nothing in the explanation of its successful performance requires a model to have a mind at all. Minds are hence very different from the unobservables of physics (e.g., superstrings); and Turing Testing, though essential for machine-modeling the mind, can really only yield an explanation of the body. (shrink)

Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction PART I Intentionality Chapter 1 Fodor’ Guide to Mental Representation: The Intelligent Auntie’s Vade-Mecum Chapter 2 Semantics, Wisconsin Style Chapter 3 A Theory of Content, I: The Problem Chapter 4 A Theory of Content, II: The Theory Chapter 5 Making Mind Matter More Chapter 6 Substitution Arguments and the Individuation of Beliefs Chapter 7 Stephen Schiffer’s Dark Night of The Soul: A Review of Remnants of Meaning PART II Modularity Chapter 8 Précis of The Modularity of (...) Mind Chapter 9 Why Should the Mind Be Modular? Chapter 10 Observation Reconsidered Appendix: A Reply to Churchland’s ‘Perceptual Plasticity and Theoretical Neutrality" References Index of Names. (shrink)

In this lucid portrayal of human behavior, Fred Dretske provides an original account of the way reasons function in the causal explanation of behavior.

John Searle's Speech Acts and Expression and Meaning developed a highly original and influential approach to the study of language. But behind both works lay the assumption that the philosophy of language is in the end a branch of the philosophy of the mind: speech acts are forms of human action and represent just one example of the mind's capacity to relate the human organism to the world. The present book is concerned with these biologically fundamental capacities, and, though third (...) in the sequence, in effect it provides the philosophical foundations for the other two. Intentionality is taken to be the crucial mental phenomenon, and its analysis involves wide-ranging discussions of perception, action, causation, meaning, and reference. In all these areas John Searle has original and stimulating views. He ends with a resolution of the 'mind-body' problem. (shrink)

The apparently intelligent doings of computers occasion philosophical debate about artificial intelligence . Evidence of AI is not bad; arguments against AI are: such is the case for. One argument against AI--currently, perhaps, the most influential--is considered in detail: John Searle's Chinese room argument . This argument and its attendant thought experiment are shown to be unavailing against claims that computers can and even do think. CRA is formally invalid and informally fallacious. CRE's putative experimental result is not robust and (...) fails to generalize from understanding to other mental attributes as claimed. Further, CRE depends for its credibility, in the first place, on a dubious tender of the epistemic privilege of overriding all "external" behavioral evidence to first person disavowals of mental properties like understanding. ;Advertised as effective against AI, Searle's argument is an ignoratio elenchi, feigning to refute AI by disputing a similar claim of "strong AI" or Turing machine functionalism metaphysically identifying minds with programs. AI, however, is warranted independently of FUN: even if CRA disproved FUN this would still fail to refute or seriously disconfirm claims of AI. Searle's contention that everyday predications of mental terms of computers are discountable as equivocal "as-if" predications--impugning independent seeming-evidence of AI if tenable--is unwarranted. Lacking intuitive basis, such accusations of ambiguity require theoretical support. The would-be theoretical differentiation of intrinsic intentionality from as-if intentionality Searle propounds to buttress allegations of ambiguity against mental attributions to computers, however, depends either on dubious doctrines of objective intrinsicality according to which meanings are physically in the head or on even more dubious notions of subjective intrinsicality according to which meanings are phenomenologically "in" consciousness. Neither would such would-be differentiae as these unproblematically rule out seeming instances of AI if granted. The dubiousness of as if dualistic identification of thought with consciousness also undermines the epistemic privileging of the "first person point of view" crucial to Searle's thought experiment. (shrink)

This essay considers what it means to understand natural language and whether a computer running an artificial-intelligence program designed to understand natural language does in fact do so. It is argued that a certain kind of semantics is needed to understand natural language, that this kind of semantics is mere symbol manipulation (i.e., syntax), and that, hence, it is available to AI systems. Recent arguments by Searle and Dretske to the effect that computers cannot understand natural language are discussed, and (...) a prototype natural-language-understanding system is presented as an illustration. (shrink)