🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec12.230319.23885@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>
>"Machines can't think" is explicitly *not* one of the axioms in
>Searles' argument.  He believes that machines can think, since he
>believes that brains are machines (he states this explicitly).  What
>he *does* believe is that machines can't think (or, more accurately,
>possess semantics) purely on the basis of their formal structure, and
>this belief is itself derived from the axioms I provided in another posting.

No, I know Searle claims he's a materialist.  I am not saying he uses
an axiom that machines can't think in his arguments, what I am saying 
is that he gives the impression of someone who *believes* that machines 
can't think and *therefore* tries to prove it.  I don't think there's 
anything wrong with this (fides quarens intellectum, I think the phrase 
is), I was just curious as to whether this was the case or not.  This
is not something one can answer from knowledge of Searle's arguments -
you would have to know something about him personally to answer it.

Danny.