🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec12.072642.551@cs.su.oz.au> danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny) writes:
>
>In short I still don't see what biology has to do with intentionality.  
>I know Searle THINKS the latter is somehow dependent on the former, but 
>he doesn't seem to be able to give any coherent definition either of 
>what intentionality is or of how it depends on biology.  Appeal to 
>mysterious "causal properties of biological systems" is more than a 
>little unhelpful!

Well, the structure of the argument goes like this:

1) Brains cause minds.
   (This is trivially true, as we all have brains and, presumably, minds.
    Note that this does not rule out *other* things causing minds, but
    only says that there is at least one thing that we know that
    causes minds, namely, brains.)

2) Syntax is in itself not sufficient for semantics.
   (Searle argues this is true by the definition of the terms.  AI-types
    often object to this claim, but not for any good reasons that I
    can see, except to save the project of Strong AI.)

3) Entities defined in purely computational functionalist terms are
   solely syntactic machines. 
   (This follows directly from the way computational functionalism is
    usually described, i.e., in terms of a Turing machine, which is a 
    purely syntactic engine, that is, its functions are defined
    solely on the basis of syntactic rules.)

Therefore:

4) The brain cannot cause minds simply on the basis of its functional
   relations (i.e., abstract structure).

Therefore:

5) There must be something important about the *material* of the brain
   which generates minds. 


This is the argument, somewhat reconstructed, in a nutshell.  I am not
defending it (at least, not here), but merely laying it out for you.

- michael