John Searle

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In John Searle’s paper, Minds, Brains, and Programs, he rejects the idea that the human mind behaves and computes similarly to that of a computer program. Searle comes to this conclusion by arguing against a specific type of functionalism, the Computational Theory of the Mind. He does so by objecting many of Roger Schank’s projects, ‘which aim to simulate the human ability to understand stories; being able to answer questions about a story even though the information that they give is never explicitly stated in the story’. Searle’s main focus will revolve around famous project known as the Chinese Room experiment. Using this experiment Searle refutes the idea and claim that an “appropriately programmed computer” can have the ability to think …show more content…

The Computational Theory of the Mind is essentially a philosophical view that claims that the mind is in-fact a computer, with the brain acting as the computer and the mind acting as the program that the brain uses to run. The program of the mind relies on a set of rules used to manipulate cognitive thinking down to various symbols, called the syntax. The mind then computes the symbols into actual meaning and understanding that is created by the manipulation. This representation of syntaxes and semantics is ultimately how the Computational Theory of the Mind defines computation; manipulation of symbols

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