I picked up this short book while researching Strong AI, computationalism, and intentionality for a paper in the Philosophy of Mind course that I recently took at the university. I enjoy Searle’s writing style and have thoroughly enjoyed everything I’ve read by him, but I can’t say I currently agree with many of his theses. This book is based on the Reith lectures that Searle gave to the BBC in the early 80s and is a broad overview of his thoughts on consciousness, its connection to artificial intelligence, and more broadly concerns the workings of the brain. My impression is that Searle essentially wants to say syntax and semantics are different therefore the brain isn’t just an information processor. I’m not on board with this argument but I appreciate the perspective. I plan to read more Searle in the near future. I’d recommend this as an intro to Searle’s arguments against computationalism and functionalism.

Searle's sophisticated viewpoint on the controversial subject of consciousness is supported by lucid examples, free of jargon. A short, 5-star book.

3,4*

This was the simplest read on philosophy of mind, & although I may not quite agree with Searle, I think it's a great read & very clear introduction into the topic of minds, brains and science for people who want to be introduced into this area.

Am not convinced by his arguments against Chalmers’ theory of mind. Also his characterization of the ‘chinese language room’ is classic sophistry and disanalogous to any real discussion about consciousness. Also pretty sure this guy made advances on his employee then fired her after she refused, so overall seems like a scumbag and his theory sucks

John Searle has some amazing ideas, and I think he is very thorough with his views and arguments. At the same time, I seemed to find a number of inconsistencies with his points or little parts of his bigger arguments. Especially regarding AI, I found Searle to brush over the ideas that I found most pertinent to the counterarguments that he would address. I think if he were to take a stronger stance when addressing the more complex counters, I would have definitely given this a higher rating!

1984 - Reith Lectures

I. resolving the mind-body dilemma:

4 properties of mental states:

1. consciousness - arising out of physical systems
2. intentionality - mental states concerning w/ worlds other than the mind itself
3. subjectivity - in an objective reality
4. causality - twds physical systems

---------------
all mental phenomena are caused by processes going on in the brain
mental phenomena are features of the brain

causation broadly defined:
higher level features of the very system whose behavior at the micro-level causes those features
----------------

these processes cause [give rise:] to consciousness

intentionality: requires understanding of detailed description of how phenomena are caused by biological processes while simultaneously realized in biological systems

subjectivity of mental states w/in objective conception of real world?
the existence of subjectivity IS an objective fact of biology.

mental causation -- how mental events can cause physical events.
the existence of two causal levels in the brain:
macro-level: mental processes
micro-level: neuronal processes

the higher level causal features are both caused by and realized in the structure of the lower level elements.


Mental processes are caused by the behavior of elements of the brain
emergent, second order properties
feature realized in structure made up of said elements


strong AI - b/c that is all there is to having thoughts & feelings
implementing the right program

42 - but in my lifetime i have lived thru exaggerated claims made on behalf of and eventually disappointed by games theory, cybernetics, information theory, structuralism, sociobiology, & a bunch of others.

CHAPITRE III.

just b/c it acts like it knows what it's doing
doesn't necessarily mean it knows what it's doing

if it moves like a duck, & quacks like a duck,
that doesn't necessarily make it a duck.

rule following:
literal | semantic content -> causal potency
metaphorical | formal procedures [based upon syntax alone:]
info-processing:
psychological info-processing MS(Y) level of intentionality | mental states/events
'as-if' MS (N) level of neurophysiology/brain

CHAPITRE IV.
structure & explanation of actions & behavior

there is more to types of action than types of physical movements
actions have preferred descriptions (determined by the intention in action)
ppl know what they'r doing w/o observation
the principles by which we identify 'n explain action r themselves part of the actions, ie, they are partly constitutive of actions

intentional state [belief, desire, hopes, fears:]
content: about sth
psychological mode/type
conditions of satisfaction: each state itself determines under what conditions it's true, fufilled, carried out, etc.

intentional [mental:] causation:
internal connection btw cause & effect -> cause both brings about & represents the effect
the mind brings about the very state of affairs [effect:] that it has been thinking about [representing:]
the mental component causes the physical component and it represents the physical component

3 features of intentional states | intentionality:
consist of a content in a certain type
determine their conditions of satisfaction, ie, depending on whether the world matches the content of the state
sometimes they cause things to happen, by way of intentional causation to bring about a match, ie, to bring about the state of affairs they represent, their own conditions of satisfaction [free will:]

prior intentions (premeditated) vs. intentions in action

the mental energy that powers action is an energy that works by intentional causation. It is a form of energy whereby the cause, either in the form of desires or intentions, represents the very state of affairs that it causes.

back ground of intentionality: skills, habits, abilities, etc..

behavior both contains and is caused by internal mental states

CHAPITRE V.

1. for there to be laws of the social sciences [in the sense in which there are strict laws of physics:], there have to be some bridge principles btw the higher and the lower levels, namely btw social/psychological phenomena & physical phenomena
2. social phenomena are defined in terms of the psychological attitudes that ppl take twds them. the concept that names the phenomenon is part of the phenomenon itself. In general, ppl have to think that's what it is.
3. this makes these categories physically open-ended, ie, there are no physical limitations
4. which makes it that there can't be bridging principles btw social & physical features (a necessity in defining strict social laws w/o any exceptions)
5. in addition, bridging the mind and the brain is impossible due to the fact of there being infinite # of possible inputs, which cannot possibly all result in the same neurophysiological output

social sciences: theories of pure & applied intentionality w/in historical/contextual frames of reference to an ext environment

summation=> the radical discontinuity btw the social & natural sciences derives from the intrinsically mental character of social/psychological phenomena.

CHAPITRE VI.

Indeterminism [statistical determinance:] is no evidence that there is or could be some mental energy of human freedom that can move molecules in directions that they were not otherwise going to move.

Compatibilism - free wil & determinism are perfectly compatible w/ each other.
- claims all our actions are perfectly predetermined if not by ext force or psychological compulsion, then thru our inner psychological causes --> reasons for acting
- denies the substance of free will while maintaining its verbal shell

Question of free will: "Could we have done otherwise, all other conditions remaining the same?"

The worrisome form of determinism is more basic and fundamental. Since all of the surface features of the world are entirely caused by and realised in systems of micro-elements, the behavior of micro-elements is sufficient to determine everything that happens. Such a 'bottom up' picture of teh world allows for top-down causation )our minds, eg, can affect our bodies). But top-down causation only works b/c the top level is already caused by and realised in the bottom levels.

free will & consciousness
passive experiences: "This is happening to me" <-- There are no options built into the experience
intentional actions: "I am making this happen." --> I could be doing sth else

As long as we accept the bottom-up conception of physical explanation, and it is a conception on which the past three hundred years of science are based, then psychological facts about ourselves, like any other higher level facts, are entirely causally explicable in term of and entirely realised in systems of elements at the fundamental micro-physical elvel. Our conception of physical reality simply does not allow for radical freedom.

Evolution has given us a form of experience of voluntary action where the experience of freedom, that is to say, the experience of the sense of alternative possibilities, is built into the very structure of conscious, voluntary, intentional human behavior. For that reason, I believe, neither this discussion nor any other will ever convince us that our behavior is unfree.

We have here a little big book about the deep, hard, mind body problem and the AI.

The interesting here is that Searle takes a intermediate way ,between the reductionist physicalism that denies that we have inherently subjetive conscient mental states, and that they were so reals and so irreductibles as any other thing in the universe, and the dualism.

The book is divided in six parts.
The first is devoted to the mind- brain problem,Searle claims that there are four features of the mental phenomenology that have made really hard this matter, and the features are : the consciousness,the intentionality,the subjectivity and thr mental causation.
In few words the autor says that the mind is a emergent phenomenon of the fisical brain,is a new fact rised up of the collectivity of the pieces that form it.The whole is more that the sum of parts
As an example of emergence we have the ice that is a new state upsurged of the community of the electromagnetic interactions of the wáter molecules, or a termite mound that is a new thing that emerges of the collective phisical and chemical interactions of the termites comunity.
As without wáter molecules there is not ice, or as without termites there is not termite mound, so without brain there is not mind.
The emergent phenomenon is difficult to explain by the properties of the parts,is not evident the existence of a termite mound by observing isolated termites.
The matter is so neccesary for the existence of the mind.

The second part is entitled: Can a computer think?.
Here Searle is a brillian oponent tho the strong AI in the sense that to proces information formally is not enought to have mental processes in the human sense.
In brief his reasoning is that the brains works with sintaxis and semantics,the computer programs work only with formal sintaxis that isnt enought for semantics,they use the significant not the mean.The computer programs are defined by its formal or sinctactic structure.
By that any computer program running in a computer isnt enought to generate a mind.
Searle by this claims that the brain cant be only a digital computer, it cant be reduced to a formal algoritm,the brain in its architecture as in its "operative system"is different of a digital processor.
But he dont denies that artificial minds can be build ,ever that they have a architecture a complexity and a eficiency equivalent to the human brain.
To make clear the fact that a formal sintaxis cant think Searle put the famous example of "the chinesse room"
As a universal Turing machine is the basis of the digital computers, the conclusión seems to be that none Turing machine could have a mind.

In the third part searle makes a critic to the cognitivism ,and in brief he puts the example of a watch,Suposse the ancient humans find a spring mechanical watch that measures the time, but it is enclosed in a unaccesible box, and they are unable of open it to study it and know it inner working, then in a try to understand the inner working of the watch the humans build a sand watch that it also efficiently measures the time.
Could claim us from this that the humans have now a better knowledge of the inner working of the watch in the box?.

The fourth part is about of the structure of the action.
The fifth part is about of the social sciences perspective.
Personally I have found this parts less relevants, as for sake of brevity I will not review they.

The sixth part is about the free Will.
For Searle this a very hard problem,he claims that the concept of free will is only applicable to conscient beings and that at a very fundamental level it dont exist as our mental states are determined at microphysical levels but that the sense of free will is in some way a appareance,a sensation that is hard wired to our intentional human behaviour.

A strongly recomended book to everybody interested in the mind body problem.

This is the book that answered all my questions on the brain and mind. It also explained why certain questions cannot be answered and why human behavior could never be predicted with any certainly. It certainly shows that science fiction stories like the Foundation series by Asimov can only remain fantasies.

A good book about the mind in relation to AI and science, and a quick read given the difficulty of the subject matter.

This book is worth it for chapter 2 alone, where the author presents his Chinese Room thought-experiment.

It sounds like a pretty good idea, this Turing test. If you can’t tell the difference between a person and a computer when you are talking to them, well, that has to mean there is Artificial Intelligence … doesn’t it? According to Searle the answer to that question is no. And to prove it he came up with his own thought experiment called the Chinese Room – which he describes in this book.

You are brought into a glass room and in that glass room there is a pile of Chinese symbols and beside them a series of instructions. The instructions are in English – a language you are fluent in – about what to do with the Chinese symbols – a language you have no knowledge of at all. The instructions say that if someone comes to the window and holds up a sign that has a squiggle, line, squiggle on it you are to locate this sign and then hold up the sign from the pile that is indicated by the instructions. People come to the window and hold up signs and you look through your instructions and hold up the corresponding signs from your pile.

What you don’t realise is that the people outside the room are Chinese speakers and their signs says things like, “Do you know where the bathroom is?” and your signs say things like, “Yes, take the first left, you can’t miss it.”

Now, the person outside the room would naturally assume you can speak Chinese – but do you? You see, you are doing exactly what the computer in Turing’s test is doing. The person outside the room can have no way of telling the difference between you speaking Chinese and you following a series of non-Chinese instructions. The outputs are exactly the same – but can you say you speak Chinese on the basis of this test? I think the answer has to be no.

This is my problem with Searle – he makes so much sense and is so clear and so apparent that it is hard not to just agree with him. And this is true even though some of his conclusions ought to make me feel a bit concerned. For example, he says elsewhere that Materialism is the greatest mistake facing social science today – now, I ought to find that a concerning statement – but he explains his concerns with Materialism so lucidly that it is hard to disagree with him.

Searle’s argument is that consciousness requires intention. It doesn’t matter if you do all of the acts, have all the appearance of being conscious, the thing that makes consciousness ‘real consciousness’ is intention.

The second half of this book looks at the nature of intention and how actions, in as far as they are actions, need to be ‘intended’. Of course, intentions are not simple things, rather we have clusters of intentions and these are realised (if at all) through the application of our will and a complex interrelationship of our skills and abilities.

He has much of interest to say about the nature of free will and whether or not social sciences will ever be ‘proper sciences’ in the sense that physics is a science. He thinks not, but interestingly because the social sciences deal with things that are neither physical nor mental – but somewhere in between – like ‘inflation’ or ‘marriage’.

To Searle the mind is a property of the brain, in much the same way that digestion is a property of the stomach. He does not say that it exists separately from the brain, just as digestion does not exist separate from the stomach – but chopping up the stomach is never going to completely explain digestion, and chopping up the brain is never going to completely explain thinking. There is a complex interrelationship between mind and brain and it makes little sense to follow the Cartesian dualism of the mind/body split and try to work out which is physical and which is mental – just as it is equally senseless to follow the strict materialist view in effectively denying the existence of all mental states.

The thing I like most about Searle is that he says things like it is pointless trying to deny that we have a subjective consciousness (a first person consciousness, if you will) that feels like we have both intentionality and free will. Any theory that denies we have intentions needs to back up this suggestion with some pretty serious explaining. However, because modern science seems to spend an awful lot of time providing explanations for the world that seem counterintuitive we almost think consciousness needs to be explained in a way that makes no sense too. Ironically, the fact some modern theories seem daft has actually stood in their favour.

Like I said, I have a very strong attraction for anyone who can explain complex ideas in simple and engaging ways. I really like people who can come up with clever and new ways of tackling difficult questions and make the answers seem to shine. Sometimes I do worry that I am being blinded by his clarity and the eloquence of his explanations – but then, it is generally better to be blinded by clarity than it is to be dumbfounded by convoluted nonsense.

I can think of no better use to put one’s mind to than reading one of Searle’s engaging books. And this is a particularly engaging one.