John Searle
In “Can Computers Think?” John Searle argues against the prevailing view in philosophy, psychology, and artificial intelligence, which emphasizes the analogies between the functioning of the human brain and the functioning of digital computers. (Searle, 372) He asks whether a digital computer, as defined, can think. Specifically, he asks whether instantiating or implementing the right computer program with the right inputs and outputs is sufficient to, or constitutive of, thinking, to which he answers no, since “computer programs are defined purely syntactically.” (Searle, 376) In this essay, I will argue that, according to Searle’s own definition of semantic understanding, computers do have at least a minimal amount of semantics. I will argue that Margret Boden’s objections to Searle’s argument in “Escaping from the Chinese Room” are strong and that the internal symbols and procedures of computer program “do embody minimal understanding.” (Boden, 387)......
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