🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <773@capmkt.COM> charles@capmkt.COM (Charles Neveu) writes:
>
>Right! And he believes that the CR doesn't have it. I want to know how
>to analyze other 'somethings', and to be able to potentially conclude
>that they do have intentionality. So what do I look for?
>
I'm not sure why you've had so much trouble finding Searle's answer to
this. He's been pretty up-front about it.  The passage below comes from
p. 75 of the new book _Rediscovery of mind_:

"I am completely convinced that my dog, as well as other higher animals,
has conscious mental states, such a visual experiences, feelings of pain, and
sensations of thirst and hunger, and of cold and heat.  Now why am I so
convinced of that? The standard answer is because of the dog's behavior,
becuase by obsering his behavior I infer that he has mental states like 
my own. I think this answer is mistaken.  It isn't just because the dog
behaves in a way that is appropriate to having consious mental states, but 
also because I can see that the causal basis of the behavior in the dog's
physiology is relevantly like my own. It isn't just that the dog has a
structure like my own and that he has behavior that is interpretable
in way analogous to the way that I interpret my own. But rather, it is in the
combination of these two facts that I can see that the behavior is appropriate
and that it has the appropriate *causation* in the underlying physiology.
I can see, for example, that these are the dog's ears; this is his skin,
these are his eyes; that if you pinch his skin, you get behavior appropriate
to pinching skin; if you shout in his ear, you get behaviors appropriate
to shouting in ears."

If you want the reat, you'll just have to buy the book, I guess.


-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1