<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Dec 7, 2009, at 7:39 PM, Gordon Swobe wrote:</div><div><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>On his view, the brain takes on the property of consciousness in a manner analogous to that by which water takes on the property of solidity.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div>But for some reason this mysterious phase change only happens to 3 pounds of grey goo in our head and never happens in his Chinese Room. He never explains why.<br><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>Like most of us here, he subscribes to and promotes a species of naturalism. He [Searle] adamantly rejects both property and substance dualism. You won't find any mystical hocus-pocus in his philosophy.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div>Bullshit. He thinks intelligent behavior is possible without consciousness so evolution could not have produced consciousness, no way no how. He has no other explanation how it came to be so to explain its existence he has no choice but to resort to mystical hocus-pocus.</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite">he allows for the possibility of Strong Artificial Intelligence. He just doesn't think it possible with formal programs running on hardware. Not hardware enough!<br></blockquote><br><div>So if atoms are arranged in a way that produces a human brain those atoms can produce consciousness and if arranged as a computer they can too, provided the computer doesn't use hardware or software. Don't you find that idea just a little bit stupid?</div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark </div></body></html>