Re: No More Searle Please

From: Jeff Medina (analyticphilosophy@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Jan 18 2006 - 12:28:55 MST


On 1/18/06, Phil Goetz <philgoetz@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Searle's Chinese Room is still trash, AI is still possible, and
> > Block's thought experiment similarly fails to speak against the
> > possibility of AI.
>
> Searle's Chinese room isn't about whether AI is possible. It's about
> whether an AI would be conscious.

The distinction you suggest is, to paraphrase Dennett, so meaningless
as to not be worth considering. Which is not to say it isn't possible,
but given the state of 'qualia' literature and especially the methods
of distinguishing 'conscious AI' from 'zombie AI' (i.e. there are
none), such a distinction confuses more than it helps any genuine
philosophical or software-methodological progress on AI.

--
Jeff Medina
http://www.painfullyclear.com/
Community Director
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.intelligence.org/
Relationships & Community Fellow
Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies
http://www.ieet.org/
School of Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/phil/


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