[ExI] Wernicke's aphasia and the CRA.

[Gordon Swobe]

--- On Sat, 12/12/09, Alfio Puglisi <alfio.puglisi at gmail.com> wrote:

>> It follows also that because biological brains have minds,
> they must do something besides run formal programs.
> 
> Do you also expand this statement to "something
> besides moving molecules around and shuffling electrical
> charges?" Because that's what a biological brain
> does. 

Good question, and I think the answer is a qualified "no". 

That shuffling of molecules and electrical charges to which you refer may very well have something to do with how brains cause consciousness. But Searle would qualify my answer by adding, "We don't yet know if only the activities of the brain cause it to become conscious. It may also have something to do with the substances of which it is made. We simply don't yet know if anything other than a real organic biological brain can have consciousness."

The upshot is that until we understand exactly how real organic brains become conscious, we run the risk (of concern at least to philosophers of the subject) of creating a non-organic AI that appears to have consciousness but which in fact only mimics it. 

-gts