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Loading... Geist, Hirn und Wissenschaft : die Reith lectures 1984 (original 1984; edition 1992)by John R. Searle, Harvey P. Gavagai
Work InformationMinds, Brains and Science by John Searle (1984)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. 12/13/21 This book is worth it for chapter 2 alone, where the author presents his Chinese Room thought-experiment. In this short book, Searle stakes out possibly the weirdest and (I think) least tenable ground available in the philosophy of mind. I'll start from the point where he ends. Searle ultimately concludes that free will is an illusion, and that our actions are determined by the mechanistic/probabilistic laws of physics. This is an eminently sensible conclusion, but I can't figure out how he squares it with his earlier theses: namely, (a) that strong-AI is in principle impossible (Chapter 2), and (b) that there is a radical discontinuity between the objects of the hard sciences and the objects of the social sciences (Chapter 5). If the universe is mechanistic, then we are indistinguishable from machines. Isn't that proof that machines may have the capacity for consciousness and subjectivity? And doesn't that lead us to the strong-AI position? Likewise, if the the objects of social science are radically discontinuous from the objects of natural science, what is the nature of that discontinuity, if it isn't free will? If there is no free will, then a reduction of social science to physical science is possible in principle, though computationally intractable. I want answers to these objections, and Searle doesn't provide them. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesReith Lectures (1984)
Minds, Brains and Science takes up just the problems that perplex people, and it does what good philosophy always does: it dispels the illusion caused by the specious collision of truths. How do we reconcile common sense and science? John Searle argues vigorously that the truths of common sense and the truths of science are both right and that the only question is how to fit them together. Searle explains how we can reconcile an intuitive view of ourselves as conscious, free, rational agents with a universe that science tells us consists of mindless physical particles. He briskly and lucidly sets out his arguments against the familiar positions in the philosophy of mind, and details the consequences of his ideas for the mind-body problem, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, questions of action and free will, and the philosophy of the social sciences. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)128.2Philosophy and Psychology Philosophy Of Humanity The Human Condition MindLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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