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Dennett, Searle's Chinese Room Argument, symbols,

Dennett argues contra Searle that the consciousness that we attribute to a computer is identical with the physical process as such rather than with the processing of a system of symbols.  But a computer program, inasmuch as it has multiple instantiations, seems not to be identical with any one of the physical processes that instantiate it.  In fact, these different instantiations may share no specific physical properties.  What these instantiations have in common is that they all function for us as a system of symbols.

Searle's argument works only inasmuch as his opponent identifies thought with the operation of a program (with the program being a system of symbols), but that's enough to win the day, ...

for Dennett's counterargument has the problem that the same physical process going on in a machine could be the basis for many different functions.  So it doesn't clearly perform this function rather than that until someone using the computer interprets its operations as being for this or that purpose.  So just as the physical processes going on in a machine cannot be identified with its function, so too the operation of the computer hardware, qua uninterpreted, cannot be identified with consciousness.  But once we regard it as the operation of system of symbols, we are making it vulnerable to the Chinese Room Argument.


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