Objections and Responses
3. The Brain Simulator Reply
“Make computer simulate neurons, not AI programs”
- In passing: Searle notes this is a strange reply
- seems to abandon AI after all!
- Searle: there is no link between mental states and their ability to affect states of the world
- “As long as it simulates only the formal structure of a sequence of neuron firings … it won’t have simulated what matters about the brain, namely its causal properties, its ability to produce intentional states”
- “intentional states”: that feature of mental states by which they are directed at states of affairs in the world