1. Introduction | 2. The Chinese Room Argument and Artificial Intelligence | 3. The Chinese Room Argument and Functionalism | 4. Conclusion | Endnotes
Chapter Two
THE CHINESE ROOM ARGUMENT

Involved expressions with such inbuilt Chinese-box complexity impede validatory operations or render them unperformable. (Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations vol.1, p.69).

1. Introduction

Searle himself sometimes even seems to admit his argument lacks the force against the thesis of AI he seemed originally to suggest (and many still seem to suppose) it has. He allows, "I have not tried to prove a computer cannot think" (Searle 1990a, p.27). Far from being a brutal refutation of AI, then, CRA does not properly refute AI at all. Against claims of artificial intelligence properly so called (as opposed to the claims of "strong AI" in Searle's proprietary sense of that phrase), CRA is a non sequitur; and insofar as Searle continues to misleadingly style it an argument against "strong AI," an ignoratio elenchi. Even if CRA did establish its explicit conclusion that "programs by themselves are not minds" (Searle 1989a, p.407), this alone does not entail "It's impossible that machines such as digital computers will ever think," nor even that they do not think already. And in fact -- as I will show (in Chapter 4) -- there are substantial reasons for thinking computers literally have mental properties, or literally think, already; reasons quite independent of the (roughly functionalist) hypothesis that programs by themselves causally suffice for mental activity, or that minds are really just programs, that Searle explicitly stalks.

Section 2 of this chapter shows that the first, would-be antifunctionalist, conclusion of Searle's argument -- "Programs are [not] sufficient for minds" (Searle 1989a, p. 703) -- even were it were proven by Searle's argument (or simply true) would not logically impugn claims (that computers can think or do think) of AI proper: this Searle has rightly (if not always consistently) acknowledged. But the "brutally simple" crux of the argument (BSA) purporting to prove the aforementioned antifunctionalist conclusion (-FUN) also fails: the conclusion, "Programs are [not] sufficient for minds" is not a valid consequence of Searle's stated premises. This is shown in Section 3. Besides not having the brutal consequences against AI Searle advertises, neither does the unsupplemented CRA make a valid (much less sound) case for the antifunctionalist conclusion it targets in the first instance. In Section 3 I also consider various supplementary assumptions which would, if admissible, validate Searle's argument against functionalism after all. One such assumption -- that all things are computers or instantiate programs -- proves most interesting. Implausible though it seems on its face, this assumption turns out not to be unique to Searle nor is it original to him. In fact, it is an assumption that (most) functionalists share. Despite the unsupplemented CRA's failure to provide a sound (or even valid) argument against functionalism, then; and despite the implausibility, on its own head, of this supplementary assumption which would suffice (given Searle's other premises) to validly entail the antifunctionalist conclusion that "programs, by themselves, aren't minds"; Searle's CRA does make a compelling ad hominem case against any version of functionalism which accepts (as most do) the view that "just about any system has a level of description where you can describe it as a digital computer" or "as instantiating a formal program" (Searle et al. 1984, p.153). Perhaps this explains the pique and consternation Searle's argument has inspired in functionalists and cognitivists, despite its logical and evidential failings.

2.1 Some Preliminary Concepts and Distinctions | 2.2 The Chinese Room Argument
2. The Chinese Room Argument and Artificial Intelligence

2.11 Cognitivism and Functionalism | 2.12 Multiple Realizability | 2.13 Cognitivism and AI | 2.14 Interregnum | 2.15 The Chinese Room Argument and Experiment 
2.1 Some Preliminary Concepts and Distinctions

(AIP) Computers (if appropriately programmed) can literally have mental states.

(SAIP) Some computers actually have mental states already.

What Searle calls "strong AI," initially, then, is something like the conjunction of the claim that computers can think (or will, if they don't already), with the further claim that programs explain how we (humans and certain higher animals) think. Call this second tenet of Searle's "strong AI," which proposes "to elucidate the workings of the mind by treating them as computations" (Johnson-Laird 1988, p.9), cognitivism. It might be stated as follows:

(COG) To explain human cognitive (and other mental) properties is to specify the programs from whose execution those properties derive.

Unfortunately (for simplicity's sake), the following is what Searle eventually does conclude from CRA: "Programs by themselves are not minds" (Searle 1989a, p.703), or (alternately) "Programs are neither constitutive of nor sufficient for minds" (Searle 1990a, p.27). Perhaps we can combine these variant formulations and represent Searle's explicit conclusion, then, as follows:

(C1) Programs by themselves are not (sufficient for) minds.

(F1) Minds are (caused by) programs: i.e., mental states are (caused by) program states, mental operations are (caused by) program operations, etc.

(FUN) The right Programs are (sufficient to cause) minds: i.e., some Program states are (sufficient to cause) mental states, some Program operations are (sufficient to cause) mental operations, etc.

2.11 Cognitivism and Functionalism

Does COG entail FUN? If so, were CRA a sound argument for -FUN, then CRA would entail -(AIP & COG); though of course, unless -COG entails -AIP, this will still not make CRA an argument against AI proper. I take it that COG does entail FUN, in conjunction with the following principle of scientific realism:

(SR) Whatever the best (most precise, extensive, interconnected, etc.) scientific theory ultimately postulates for explanatory purposes really exists and constitutes or causes the phenomena thus explained.

So, I forego misgivings about SR and accept that for a program to explain some particular human performance, or type of human performance, the program must really exist; presumably in us, in our nervous systems: the states and operations of programs posited to explain our mental states (if they really do explain our mental states), moreover, have to cause or constitute the mental states and operations they explain. Accepting SR, then, COG entails FUN: but as our formulation of FUN (following Searle) is equivocal (between "causes" and "constitutes"), which version of FUN does it entail? This depends on the sort of explanatory accounts cognitivism takes programs to provide: reductive accounts, subsuming the mental phenomena (or mental descriptions of the phenomena) they explain under biconditional laws (of the form (x)(Px <-> Mx); or whether they provide nonreductive causal accounts, subsuming mental phenomena under conditional laws of the form (x)(Px -> Mx).{3}

2.12 Multiple Realizability

(MR) Identical types of mental attributes can be realized or caused differently (by different programs or algorithms) in different types of systems (and perhaps even different individual systems of a single type).

(FUN') For systems of any specific kind, some program(s) are (sufficient for) minds in systems of that specific kind: i.e., some program operations are (sufficient for) mental operation in systems of one kind; some program states are (sufficient for) mental states in systems of another kind, etc.

2.13 Cognitivism and AI

Suppose there were a program of a given type (P) which, implemented in the hardware of a TI-1706 pocket calculator (C), would cause such a calculator (so programmed) to perform (mental) acts of calculation (M).{4} It does not plainly follow from this that the same program or algorithm, if it could be implemented in different hardware, would have the same effect; nor that any other systems having the same calculating abilities as the TI-1706 have them in virtue of implementing the same program (or algorithm). It would not follow, in other words, from the fact that P sufficed to cause the TI-1706 to calculate that P explained the calculative performance of humans or any other calculative system. Indeed, P might not even explain the calculative performances of other pieces of TI-1706 hardware (even the same piece on a different occasion!), since it might be the case that more than one program would suffice to make TI-1706 type devices calculate: the program that makes TI-1706a calculate might not even explain TI-1706b's calculation (much less all calculation, including human calculation); or if TI-1706a were reprogrammed between time t and t', the program that made it calculate at t would not even explain this very same (hardware) device's calculation at t'.

Clearly, given MR, AIP can't entail COG: the fact that a given P suffices for M in systems of type S does not (given MR) entail that every system that manifests M must likewise implement a program of type P -- or, for that matter, any program at all. It would not follow, in other words, from the fact that a particular type of computer running appropriate programs "literally has cognitive states" that "the [same] programs thereby explain human [my emphasis] cognition." It would not even follow from the fact that some programs suffice for some species of cognition in some (specific types of) computers, that there must be some (perhaps different) programs that suffice for and explain the same species of cognition in humans. At most, the fact that computers can be programmed to "literally have cognitive states" might provide confirmation or inductive support for the hypothesis that the mental states in question result from programming in us also.

Thus, Searle is right, it seems, to confess that CRA does not at all go to demonstrate the falsity of AIP or prove that "a computer cannot think" (Searle 1990a, p.27); though whether the considerations CRA brings forward disconfirm AIP or evidence that "a computer cannot think" remains an open question. If the argument does not even do this, then Searle's characterization of the Chinese room argument as "directed at" AI is completely unwarranted.

2.14 Interregnum

Now in the course of discussing MR I suggested an even stronger rendering of the principle: to allow, not only that different causes might suffice for the same mental effect in different types of systems, but that the same causes that sufficed for one type of system might not suffice for another -- as equiangularity suffices for equilaterality in triangles, but not in rectangles (cf. Sharvy 1985). For my present expository and analytic purposes, it is best that we set this aside; for it is contrary to the whole thrust of Searle's understanding of the view he opposes, which he characterizes as the view that programs by themselves suffice for mind. "Strong AI," as Searle styles it, seems committed to the proposition that if a program P suffices for having mental property M in one type of system the same program must suffice for every other type of system. Perhaps FUN' is the doctrine that functionalists should hold; yet something like the original simpler thesis, FUN is what proponents of functionalism, by and large, do seem to hold; and it is something like FUN, and not FUN' which is Searle's actual target. I propose to table FUN', then, and proceed to consider whether CRA entails -FUN, as Searle expressly alleges.

2.15 The Chinese Room Argument and Experiment

2.21 Causal Powers (at least) Equivalent to Brains | 2.22 Brainpower: A Captivating Picture | 2.23 Engines of Intentionality | 2.24 Conclusions Concerning Brainpower | 2.25 A "Polemical" Tack
2.2 The Chinese Room Argument

(A1) Programs are formal (syntactic).
(A2) Minds have contents (semantics).
(A3) Syntax by itself is neither constitutive of nor sufficient for semantics.

(C1) Programs by themselves are not (sufficient for) minds.

(A4) Brains cause minds.

(C2) Any other system capable of causing minds would have to have causal powers (at least) equivalent to those of brains.

(C3) Any artifact that produced mental phenomena, any artificial brain would have to be able to duplicate the specific causal powers of brains, and it could not do that just by running a formal program.

(C4) The way human brains actually produce mental phenomena cannot be solely by virtue of running a computer program.

With respect to C2, I contend that the only construal of this claim that would allow it to be an immediate trivial consequence of A4, makes C2 a triviality in its own right: on this construal C2 becomes tantamount to the truism that whatever suffices to cause some effect has the same causal powers as whatever else suffices to cause that effect, in the sense that each has the causal power to bring about this very effect. Thus understood, C2 is too trite to be of interest, and also will be too weak for the use -- to argue against SAIP -- to which Searle, I take it, wants it put. On the other hand, construed in such a way as to suit it to figure in the sort of implied argument against (the scientific thinkability) of AIP or SAIP Searle may well envisage, C2 is not a consequence (obvious or otherwise) of A4 (whether taken alone, or "in conjunction with [Searle's] earlier derivation [of C1]").

2.21 Causal Powers (at least) Equivalent to Brains

(C2) Any other system capable of causing minds would have causal powers (at least) equivalent to a brain's.
(S) No (presently existing) computer has causal powers (at least) equivalent to a brain's.
therefore,
(SAIP) No (presently existing) computers are capable of causing minds.

"Certain brain process equivalents produce intentionality" and "X [a digital computer] does not have these equivalents," therefore "X does not have intentionality." (Carleton 1984, p. 221)

Now C2, in a sense, is an immediate and trivial consequence of A4, "Brains cause minds"; while S just seems like an obvious empirical truth about the causal powers of (existing) computers. But the appearance of soundness here is deceiving and derives from equivocal use of the phrase "causal powers (at least) equivalent to brains." In the sense of that phrase in which the claim "Any system causing mind must have causal powers equivalent, in this sense, to a brain" follows immediately and trivially from the statement "Brains cause minds," it is not at all obvious -- in fact, it merely begs the question against SAIP to assume -- that presently existing computers don't have causal powers equivalent to brains: the sense that "equivalent causal powers" must bear for C2 to be a trivial consequence of A4 is just that of equivalence with respect to causing minds or mental states (which is the very thing at issue). On the other hand, the sense in which it's empirically obvious that presently existing computers fall short of brains in their causal powers, "causal powers (at least) equivalent to brains" must mean something like equivalent in all respects; but understood in this sense, the inference from A4 to C2 is anything but obvious and trivial. In fact it seems that nothing but another brain -- perhaps even nothing but the very same brain -- could have causal powers exactly equivalent to a brain's. If the inference from A4 to C2 were valid given this understanding of "causal powers (at least) equivalent" I might just as well argue, "Since Hydrogen bombs cause death, to cause death requires causal powers (at least) equal to an H-bomb. Cyanide lacks causal powers equal to an H-bomb. So, cyanide can't cause death."

So, if "(at least) equal causal powers" just means "equally capable of causing the specified effect," C2 follows trivially enough from A4; but the truth of S is no more obvious than the falsity of SAIP.  On this construal of "equal causal powers" S is tantamount to -SAIP, and premising that computers lack equal causal powers in this sense just begs the disputed question. On the other hand, if "equal causal powers" means "equivalent in all respects," then the inference from A4 to C2 is far from trivial. Rather it seems guilty of something like the formal fallacy of denying the antecedent (which is explicit on Carleton's formulation, as he notes) in its seeming assumption that if A's (e.g., brains) cause B's (e.g., mental states), then only A's can cause B's. Thus construed, the argument seems little better than this: All functioning brains cause mental states, and No digital computers are functioning brains, therefore No digital computers cause mental states.

Apparently, then, the argument requires an understanding of "equal causal powers" which is stronger than merely "equal with respect to being able to cause this effect" (the question begging alternative), yet weaker than "equivalent in all respects" (the invalidating alternative); something like "equivalent in the causally relevant respects," which would require something like a specification of which causal powers (e.g., of brains) are necessary for producing a given mental effect. Presumably such an (intermediately strong) understanding of "equal causal powers" would also speak to the difficulty that there are not only effects H-bombs have (e.g., fallout) that cyanide lacks, there are also causal powers cyanide has but not H-bombs (e.g., you can swallow cyanide). The problem is, since cyanide has powers that H-bombs lack, and H-bombs powers that cyanide lacks, which is causally more powerful? What could Searle mean by "at least"?

2.22 Brainpower: A Captivating Picture

It is a bit like saying that if my petrol engine drives my car at seventy-five miles an hour, then any diesel engine that was capable of doing that would have to have a power output at least equivalent to that of my petrol engine. (Searle 1984a, p. 40-41)

One alternative is to read "is conscious" as tantamount to "thinks" in the weak, generic sense of "having (some) mental properties." Descartes himself appears to suggest something like this weak or generic sense of the "thought" in the famous passage where he characterizes a "thinking thing" as "a thing which doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, which also imagines and feels (Descartes, 1642, p.19).{6} But the trouble with this alternative is that, so interpreted, the proposal that X = consciousness just seems to follow the question begging path of "equal causal powers" weakly construed. The question of whether something has the requisite consciousness to allow it to display some particular mental ability (e.g., the question of whether the robot with its computerized visual processing really sees) is not independent of (or answerable antecedently to answering) the question of whether it actually displays those abilities (or merely acts as if it did).

A more sophisticated variant of this approach -- going Aristotelian -- insists there's a hierarchy of mental powers, such that the higher powers (e.g., mathematical calculation) presuppose lower ones (e.g., sense perception), such that nothing can calculate that can't also perceive. Searle seems to avail himself of some such Aristotelian picture when he says,

From an evolutionary point of view, just as there is an order of priority in the development of other biological processes, so there is an order and priority in the development of Intentional phenomena. In this development language and meaning, at least in the sense in which humans have language and meaning, comes very late. Many species other than humans have sensory perception and intentional action, and several species, certainly the primates, have beliefs, desires and intentions, but very few species, perhaps only humans, have the peculiar but also biologically based form of intentionality we associate with language and meaning. (Searle 1983, p.8)

Alternately -- instead of going Aristotelian -- we might try being thoroughly Cartesian and identifying different levels of brainpower with having varying degrees of private, introspectable, conscious experience. This, of course, runs afoul of familiar philosophical difficulties. How do I know whether anything else is conscious, or (if they are) what their private conscious experiences are like? (Other minds problems.) There are doubts (of Watsonian vintage) about the public scientific utility of private introspected "facts"; doubts (of a Wittgenstinean stripe) about the explanatory relevance of conscious experience even where it might seem germane in one's own case, e.g., for explaining what it is to know what "red" or "pain" means; problems about the possible existence of unconscious mental states such as most (nonbehaviorist) research programs in modern psychology (from Mach and Freud, to Marr and Chomsky) have posited; etc. Certainly, much of what Searle has said in these connections over the years -- from his insistence, early on, "on the first person point of view" (Searle 1980c, p.421) to his recent talk of "ontological subjectivity" (Searle 1989b, p.194) -- suggests that he is all too willing to appeal to consciousness in the Cartesian manner; yet he has, all along, been all too unwilling to face up to the sorts of difficulties with such appeals, just noted. He dismisses other minds objections as attempts to "feign anesthesia" (Searle 1980a, p.421) and dismisses Yorick Wilks' attempt to remind him of Wittgenstein's discussion "to the effect that understanding and similar states cannot consist in a feeling or experience" (Wilks 1982, p.344) as "just irrelevant to my views" (Searle 1982, p.348) -- though this discussion seems precisely relevant to his views -- without explanation.

Well, if there is "no problem" in Searle's discussion "about how I know that other people have cognitive states" (Searle 1980a, p.421); and if we can understand Searle's insistence that, "I, of course, do not claim that understanding [sic] is the name of a feeling or experience" (Searle 1982, p. 348) to be denying that understanding is a feeling or experience that the word "understanding" names; then perhaps -- despite such appearances to the contrary as mentioned above -- we should credit Searle's explicit disavowal of "any of the Cartesian paraphernalia" (Searle 1987, p.146) and not view him as positing degrees of unitary mental force or "brainpower" identifiable with introspectable degrees of consciousness.{7}

What seems needed is to cash out such scientifically questionable appeals to the private data of conscious experience in terms of some publicly detectable correlates or causes of those experiences. Since it is largely through his disavowal of dualism in favor of a "monist interactionist" (Searle 1980b, p.454) or "biological naturalist" (Searle 1983; 1992) view that "mental phenomena ... are both caused by the operations of the brain and realized in the structure of the brain" (Searle 1983, p. ix) by which Searle seeks to distance himself from full-blooded Cartesianism, let us consider whether we mightn't (along these lines) indirectly measure "brainpower" by referring directly to such operations and structures in brains as produce it. Though we may be barred from directly measuring the consciousness levels produced by brains other than our own -- indeed, the notion of measurable degrees of consciousness is obscure enough even in its first person applications -- we might at least infer the levels of consciousness other brains can produce from some measurable (or at least publicly detectable) structural properties or causal features of brains. (As we can calculate the horsepower capacities of internal combustion engines from their displacements and compression ratios.)

2.23 Engines of Intentionality

Of course even the discovery that the crucial causal features of brains were chemical would not be wholly decisive against AI and SAIP.  Supposing future psychologists come to see the wisdom of Searle's conjecture -- it's the chemistry that counts -- begin to pursue a Searlean research program, and come to establish that the crucial mind producing features of brains really are chemical. Even suppose they additionally discover that the electrical switching capacities of brains are as irrelevant to their mental power outputs as the electromagnetic properties (most) internal combustion engines have (as accidental side effects of being made of steel) are irrelevant to their horsepower outputs. Yet it is entirely consistent with these findings -- if such were found out, concerning our brains -- that computers could produce mindpower, by different means, despite lacking whatever chemical production capabilities turned out to be crucial determinants of the mindpower of brains. Much as electric motors -- despite not having displacements or compression ratios -- produce horsepower, it might even turn out that the very electric switching capacities or computational properties (e.g., storage capacity and operation speed) which, according to Searle's conjecture, are irrelevant to the mental power outputs of brains, are nonetheless the crucial determinants of the mental capacities of computers; much as the very electromagnetic properties which are irrelevant to the horsepower capacities of internal combustion engines are crucial determinants of the horsepower capacities of electric motors. But now it is an easy extrapolation from this to see that whatever the crucial determinants of the mental powers of brains turns out to be -- contrary to the line of argument we are canvassing as a possible application of CRA against SAIP -- artificial intelligence cannot be shown to be "scientifically ... out of the question" (Searle 1990a) by showing that computers lack these crucial determinants (whatever they turn out to be).

Suppose we understood the physiological basis of brain's production of mental powers as well as we understand how internal combustion engines produce horsepower. Suppose also that we knew for certain that no computer had any of the features which are the crucial determinants of the mental powers of brains. We still cannot conclude, "Therefore, no computer has mental powers" without arguing fallaciously (in effect, denying the antecedent). We would be arguing, in effect: "Of brains, only those with chemical power Z, produce any mindpower"; "No computer has chemical power Z"; therefore, "No computer produces any mindpower." This is no more valid than to argue: "Of internal combustion engines, only those having displacements of (at least) one cubic centimeter produce any horsepower"; "No electric motor has a displacement of (even) one cubic centimeter"; "So no electric motor produces any horsepower." You might as well argue: "Of triangles, only those which are equilateral are equiangular"; "Some rectangles are not equilateral"; therefore, "Some rectangles are not equiangular" (Sharvy 1985, p.126).

2.24 Conclusions Concerning Brainpower

I conclude that the only way of interpreting C2 as a valid (much less immediate and trivial) consequence of A4 yields no interesting (non-question-begging) argument in conjunction with facts about the comparative physical endowments of humans and computers against SAIP: it seems Searle's Chinese Room Argument is very far from yielding any argument with any logical force against SAIP (or any inductive or evidential force against AIP, if -SAIP is supposed to disconfirm AIP) at all.

2.25 A "Polemical" Tack

On behalf of this polemical tack it can be observed that CRA must speak to cognitive scientists' reasons for accepting views such as AIP or SAIP (where they do), or else it couldn't have "struck a nerve" (Searle 1982, p. 345) and "achieved the status of a minor classic" (Fisher 1988, p. 279) in the field of Cognitive Science, as it has. Against this polemical tack, however, there are two weighty questions to be asked. Are there substantial independent reasons for accepting AI, which do not presume the truth of functionalism? In Chapter 4, below, I argue that there are. Does CRA validly deduce -FUN from Searle's premises: does the Chinese room argument refute functionalism? This is the question I now consider. Chapter 3 will consider the true relationship between argument (CRA) and experiment (CRE) and the force of CRE itself against the various claims (FUN, AIP, and SAIP) centrally at issue.

3.1 Searle's "Brutally Simple" Argument | 3.2 A Formalization of BSA | 3.3 Supplementary Hypothesis One: All Things Instantiate Programs | 3.4 Supplementary Hypothesis Two: Syntax Precludes Semantics | 3.5 The Minds and Programs at Issue | 3.6 Minds Have Semantics | 3.7 Interim Conclusions | 3.8 Virtually Universal Realizability | 3.9 The Concept of Computation
3. The Chinese Room Argument and Functionalism

Anyone who wishes to challenge the central thesis owes us a precise specification of which `axioms' and which derivations are being challenged. (Searle 1988, p. 232)

3.1 Searle's "Brutally Simple" Argument

(A1) Programs are syntactical.
(A2) Minds have semantics.
(A3) Syntax by itself is neither sufficient for nor constitutive of semantics.
therefore,
(C1) Programs by themselves are not minds. (1989a, p.703)

an attempt to explore the consequences of two propositions. (1) Intentionality in humans (and animals) is a product of the causal features of the brain. .... (2) Instantiating a computer program is never by itself a sufficient condition of intentionality. (1980a, p.417 abstract)

(S1) All things have (or instantiate) Programs.
(S2) Programming precludes semantics.

3.2 A Formalization of BSA

I adopt the following dictionary for the or predicates of Searle's argument:

P := is a Program
F := is formal (syntactical)
S := has semantics
M := is a mind

A1. (x)(Px -> Fx)
A2. (x)(Mx -> Sx)
A3. -(x)(Fx -> Sx)
therefore,
C1. -(x)(Px -> Mx)

3.3 Supplementary Hypothesis One: All Things Instantiate Programs

(S1) (x)Px

There is ample text to suggest that Searle holds something like S1, such as the following:

...just about any system has a level of description where you can describe it as a digital computer. You can describe it as instantiating a formal program. (Searle et al. 1984, p.153)

From a mathematical point of view, anything whatever can be described as if it were a computer. And that's because it can be described as instantiating or implementing a computer program. In an utterly trivial sense, the pen that is on the desk in front of me can be described as a digital computer. It just happens to have a very boring computer program. The program says: `Stay there.' Now ... in this sense, anything whatever is a digital computer, because anything whatever can be described as implementing a computer program.... (1984a, p.36)

To keep BSA in conjunction with S1 from being a logically compelling argument against functionalism, then, the functionalist needs to distinguish implementing (i.e., running or executing) a program from merely instantiating one in the mathematical sense in which,

On the standard textbook definition of computation,
(1) For any object there is some description of that object such that under that description the object is a digital computer.
(2) For any program there is some sufficiently complex object such that there is some description of the object under which it is implementing the program. (Searle 1990c, p.26-27)

Cognitive science ... tries to elucidate the workings of the mind by treating them as computations, not necessarily of the sort carried out by the familiar digital computer, but of a sort that lies within this broader framework of the theory of computation. (Johnson-Laird 1988, p.9)

3.4 Supplementary Hypothesis Two: Syntax Precludes Semantics

(S2) Syntax precludes semantics.

If we knew independently how to account for [any system's, even an intelligent acting robot's] behavior without such assumptions [of mental properties] we would not attribute intentionality to it. .... ... as soon as we knew that the behavior [of an intelligent acting robot] was the result of a formal program ... we would abandon the assumption of intentionality. (Searle 1980a, p.421)

Deferring consideration of these overarching questions, let us formalize S2 as follows:

(S2) (x)(Fx -> -Sx)

(P1) (3x)Px

There are several points of interest, I think, about this derivation and the premise S2 it assumes.

First, S2, like S1 is implausible on its face: S1 seemed absurd; S2 is just obviously false. If being a formalism (being syntactic or having syntax) precluded having intentional content or meaning or semantics English sentences could not have meanings (since English has syntax). Second, the assumption of both S1 and S2 in conjunction with A2 entails there is no meaning and are no minds (-(3x)(Sx v Mx))! This is illustrated by the following:

Limitation of the programs under consideration to just the (partial) Turing test passing programs -- next to be considered -- turns out to be of much less avail for avoiding this eliminativist outcome than one might think.{14} It turns out -- as we shall see -- that the same principles which underwrite claims like S1, to the effect that everything instantiates some program(s), and, moreover, that "we [humans] are instantiations of any number of programs" (Searle 1980a, p.422), would also seem to underwrite claims that at least every middle size object instantiates some (partial) Turing test passing program(s), and that we humans instantiate any number of such (partial) Turing test passing programs. Whether or not this eliminativist outcome suffers from pragmatic incoherence as some (e.g., Baker 1989) have alleged, Searle is no eliminativist: it seems Searle cannot hold both S1 and S2, but unclear which, if either, he does hold.

Having noted this possible inconsistency in Searle's view between his affirmations of S1 and S2 and his obvious belief that some things (e.g., ourselves) really have minds or mental properties, and having noted text seeming to warrant imputation to Searle of both S1 and S2, I close this section by noting a consideration which might incline us toward one alternative rather than the other, if only one of these two supplementary hypotheses can be maintained (on pain of eliminativism). The consideration is this: S1 makes a claim that most functionalists and cognitivists accept. Thus, if both S1 and S2 are implausible on their faces (and since neither BS1A nor BS2A, consequently, seem to be sound arguments against functionalism), perhaps we (or rather Searle) should forsake S2 and maintain S1 to make a compelling ad hominem case against functionalism (as we have seen that BS1A does). Assuming the supplementary premise S1 makes a valid argument (BS1A) out of Searle's BSA, then for anyone who accepts S1 (along with A1-A3), as functionalists seem wont to do, BS1A is not only valid, but (as it were) sound ad hominem.

3.5 The Minds and Programs at Issue

In this light, then, consider BSA's would-be antifunctionalist conclusion C1. This conclusion, according to Searle should be understood to be claiming, "It is not the case that (necessarily(program implies mind))" (Searle 1989a, p. 703). To be directed against functionalism (which functionalists hold to be an empirical doctrine), as just remarked, I suppose that we must understand "necessarily" here to signify causal or perhaps metaphysical{15} necessity. The closest nonmodal approximation of this, I take it, is our reconstructed C1 above: -(x)(Px -> Mx).{16}

One notable thing about C1 thus construed (and again, much the same could be said of A3, as we shall see), is that C1 thus formulated seems too obviously true to need supporting argument. Consider, e.g., the following BASIC program (PRO):

1. Goto 2
2. Goto 1

Now if (all) minds are programs, then (assuming there are minds), some programs are minds. And if the programs that are minds are supposed, by functionalists, to be only those that pass the Turing Test, and only a restricted class of those, let us understand "program" in Searle's argument to refer to just these partial Turing test passing programs: the programs in question, then would seem to be only (some of) those which, when implemented, suffice to make the implementing system behave as if it had certain mental properties; as a sieve of Erosthenes program behaves as if it were searching for prime numbers, as the program of my pocket calculator behaves as if it calculates sums, products and remainders, as DOS behaves as if it recognizes the dircommand, etc. It is just such Programs as these,{17} or the machines that implement such Programs, whose mental properties are at issue.

Similarly, some terminological clarification is necessary with regard to Searle's use -- which I have followed -- of the term "mind" in these discussions; which pertains to my characterization of partial Turing test passing programs as those at issue. "Mind" is being used here, in CRA and attendant discussion, to "abbreviate" something like "mental processes" (Searle 1984a, p.39); so that "brains cause minds" is supposed to abbreviate, or is being used "as a slogan" (Searle et al. 1984, p.153) for something like "the brain causes mental states" (Searle et al. 1984, p.153) or "mental processes are caused ... by processes going on inside the brain" (Searle 1984a, p.39). By the same token, then "Programs are not (constitutive of or sufficient for) minds" should be understood to abbreviate or be a slogan for something like "Programs are not (constitutive of or sufficient for) mental properties." This means that the holistic connotations of "mind" are not supposed to be figuring in Searle's argument -- though he sometimes seems to invoke them in supporting discussion (e.g., Searle 1983, p.8). CRA, according to Searle's avowed use of "mind," should not depend on holistic appeals to the unity or universal powers of minds.

This proviso, just scouted, concerning how "mind" is to be understood in Searle's discussions, reflects back in turn on our proposed understanding of "Program" as something like "Turing test passing program": it means that the Turing test passing in question concerns what have been called "partial Turing tests" of specified mental properties or abilities (e.g., DOS's recognition of the print command) and not the full Turing test (described in Turing 1950) of whether a system resembles a person in all (conversationally distinguishable) mental respects. Unlike the restriction of the term "program" as it figures in these discussions to Turing test passing programs, however, which didn't affect the truth of A1, the allowance that "mind" is to be understood to mean "mental property" does affect the truth of the premise A3. Perhaps all minds (in the usual sense in which a mind is something like a system of interconnected mental properties or states) have semantics or intentionality; but it seems not all mental states (taken in isolation) do. It seems most plausible to think that mental states like undifferentiated anxiety and (perhaps) pain -- which are distinguished chiefly, perhaps, by their experiential or "qualitative" contents -- are not referential (intentional or semantically contentful) states at all. But perhaps this does nothing much to derail Searle's argument. Pains and undifferentiated anxiety are not the sorts of mental properties that computers are characteristically thought to be endowed with, or have some prospects of becoming endowed with; though, on the other hand, several authors (e.g., Putnam 1960) have sketched the general outlines of functional accounts of pain. Still, the sorts of mental properties that computers are characteristically thought to have some prospect of being or becoming endowed with are, generally, intentional ones (calculating that 2+2=4, seeking to checkmate its opponent, searching for primes, etc.). These also seem to be the kind of mental properties that most invite cognitivistic explanations and functionalist identifications.

3.6 Minds Have Semantics

I do not think that intentionality is a "distinguishing feature of the mental," because it seems to me quite possible that there may be organisms that have mental phenomena in the form of conscious states, but have no intentionality. I do not know whether this is the case, but I certainly have no philosophical arguments against it. If we are talking about the "distinguishing features of the mental," I would think consciousness is a more plausible candidate than intentionality. (Searle 1989a, 707-708)

Such worries aside -- it seems, in addition to understanding "mind" as abbreviating something like "mental properties," we need to understand that the mental properties at issue are just the intentional ones. Thus understood A2 becomes a tautological claim to the effect intentional states are intentional, or that semantically contentful states have semantic content. To square this premise with the seeming facts (about undifferentiated anxiety, e.g.), and to reconcile it with Searle's own expressed opinions, then, we need to understand the mental states at issue to be just the intentional or semantically contentful states.

Now the first consequence of this further constraint on our understanding of "mind" as it occurs in BSA is that it will be perfectly consistent with the conclusion that "Programs aren't (sufficient for) mind" (where "mind" means "intentional mental properties") for programs to be sufficient for and constitutive of nonintentional mental properties; and if you incline, like Searle, to allow that it's "quite possible that there could be organisms that have mental phenomena in the form of conscious states, but have no intentionality," I suppose you would have to allow that the same is quite possible for inorganic systems, such as computers, as well. It may even be -- for all BSA has shown -- that computers or organisms have these nonintentional states in virtue of their programming; though, again, it's hard to know how we could ever tell whether this were so or not, if having such states were disconnected from having intentional states and thus (by my reckoning) largely (if not entirely) without behavioral consequences.

So, perhaps we can dismiss this possibility of Searle's as idle speculation -- though it's speculation that drives a further wedge between the claims of CRA and its advertised force against AIP or SAIP.  Since the mental properties we are most inclined to attribute to computers are intentional let us simply understand CRA (insofar as it is directed against AIP or SAIP) to be denying that computers have or can have intentional mental properties; and insofar as we are restricting our attention at present to the antifunctionalist crux of Searle's argument, let us simply understand BSA to be directed against the claim that program states and transitions (i.e., computational processes) are (constitutive of or sufficient for) intentional mental states and processes.

3.7 Interim Conclusions

A major conclusion of this chapter so far, then, is that BS1A makes a compelling ad homimen case against any version of functionalism that grants S1 (as most do) along with Searle's other premises, A1-A3. This means, I take it, that functionalists must make good the (as yet few and halting) attempts to distinguish implementing programs (as computers and perhaps brains do) and simply instantiating programs as hurricanes (Searle 1980a, p.420), Searle's wall (Searle 1990c, p.27), Searle's pen (Searle 1984a, p.36), and seemingly everything else does. Thus, while it does not flatly refute functionalism BSA imposes a research imperative on functionalism -- to make out the just mentioned distinction -- because (given the difficulty of disputing Searle's other premises, as we shall see) this seems the only way to blunt the refutative force of Searle's argument. We now need to consider how some of the other discoveries of this chapter might either allow functionalism (in some as yet unforseen way) to avoid this research imperative just alleged, or else (alternately) how they might give this imperative some particular shape.

The most relevant datum in this connection -- most supportive of some remaining functionalist hopes to avoid Searlean refutation without rethinking the account of computation functionalist theory invokes -- would seem to be the restriction we found it necessary to impose on the sense of "program" invoked by BSA, the discovery that "program" as Searle uses the term here, must refer only to (some subset of) partial Turing test passing programs. The strategy this might suggest, as a way for functionalism to evade the force of BS1A, is this: cleave to the idea that everything instantiates some program(s), while denying that everything instantiates some partial Turing test passing program(s). The question is whether S1 ((x)Px) remains true -- or rather whether it remains acceptable or even obligatory on functionalist principles -- once we understand P to refer, not to instantiations of just any program, but just to instantiations of (a subset of) partial Turing test passing programs.

3.8 Virtually Universal Realizability

1. For any object there is some description of that object such that under that description the object is a digital computer.
2. For any program there is some sufficiently complex object such that there is some description of the object under which it is implementing the program. (Searle 1990c, p.26-27)

Thus for example the wall behind my back is implementing the Wordstar program, because there is some pattern of molecule movements under which is isomorphic to the formal structure of Wordstar. But if the wall is implementing Wordstar then if it is a big enough wall it is implementing any program. (Searle 1990c, p.27).

This means an awful lot of things are going to qualify as Turing test passing computers -- there are presumably any number of partial Turing test passing programs simultaneously executing at any one time on the head of a pin. And since molecular states are terribly coarse grained -- if we help ourselves to subatomic particles and states of these -- there may even be any number of full Turing test passing programs simultaneously executing on every molecule on the head of a pin! Here I agree with Searle: "Philosophically speaking, this does not smell right to me" (Searle 1990c, p.22) either. But for now, these observations suggest an easy way -- agreeable with the conception of computation invoked by cognitivists and functionalists themselves -- to make S1 true and the BS1A sound. Why sweat the small stuff? Let us just stipulate that the universe of discourse to which the BS1A is to be taken to apply includes no objects smaller than a pinhead. Then, on the principles just canvassed, S1 ((x)Px) is true. Everything bigger than the head of a pin will instantiate some (indeed, it seems, any number of) partial Turing test passing program(s). Now, by BS1A, it follows, for things bigger than pinheads, for all intentional mental states, that instancing a program does not constitute or causally suffice for having such states.

I conclude that if functionalism invokes a concept of computation which licenses S1, then (if A1-A3 are unassailable, as they seem) functionalists license their own refutation along the Searlean lines of our proposed argument BS1A. Given that humans and all higher animals and most all computers (in the usual sense of the term "computer," in which not everything is a computer) are bigger than pinheads, and that mental attributions to computers are almost exclusively attributions of intentional states, the limitations on the scope of BS1A just proposed are inconsequential.

Having just seen why functionalism is ill advised to propound an account of computation which implies not just multiple realizability but virtual "universal realizability" (Searle 1990b, p.27), I defer discussion of whether functionalism must unavoidably propound such an account. For our present purposes, let it suffice to say that many functionalists and cognitivists (e.g., Johnson-Laird 1988, Pylyshyn 1984) do propound accounts of computation that have this consequence.{18}

3.9 The Concept of Computation

For our present purposes we may characterize programs as "systems of symbols" (Johnson-Laird 1988, p.29): "A program is a piece of text, it is the encoding of a particular algorithm in some programming language" (Pylyshyn 1984, p.88-89). More precisely, we could say that a program is like a piece of text with blanks (i.e., variables); that different ways of filling in the blanks comprise different program states: actual sequences of such states comprise an execution or running of the program. Now,

systems of symbols ... have three components: a set of primitive symbols, together with principles for constructing complex symbols out of them; a set of entities constituting the domain that is symbolized; and a method of relating symbols to the entities that they symbolize, and vice versa. (Johnson-Laird 1988, p.29)

in many models that take the form of computer programs there is much latitude in assigning semantic interpretations to the symbols, hence, to the models' states. Indeed, we routinely change our interpretation of the functional states of a typical computer, sometimes viewing the states as numbers, sometimes as alphabetic characters, sometimes as words or descriptions of a scene. Even when it is difficult to think of a coherent interpretation different from the one the programmer had in mind, such alternatives are, in principle, always possible. (There is an exotic result in model theory, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem, which guarantees that such programs can always be coherently interpreted as referring to integers and to arithmetic relations over them.) (Pylyshyn 1984, p.44)

Now, just as the vast panoply of mathematically possible interpretation functions underwrites something like Searle's A3, a similarly vast panoply of mathematically possible mappings between symbol systems -- or between various physical instantiations of symbol systems -- underwrites the two pregnant features of "the standard textbook definition of computation" that Searle remarks (1990c, p.26). Again, these are 1) that any object is a digital computer (or instantiates some program(s) under some description) and 2) that any program is instantiated by any sufficiently complex object. Despite the brave talk of proponents of "syntactic" theories of mind -- e.g., Fodor (1975) and Stitch (1983) -- about the suitability of their "syntactic" theories for providing causal explanations (of intelligent behavior) consistent with materialist presuppositions, and despite the lip-service that cognitivist and functionalist accounts of computation pay to the causal properties and connections among the computational states of actual devices, Searle is right about this: "syntax is not intrinsic to physics" (1990c, p.26), and "if computation is defined syntactically, then nothing is a digital computer solely in virtue of its physical properties" (1990c, p.28). This is because, given the (practically and psychologically unconstrained) mathematical sense of "interpretation" or "instantiation" that functionalists generally suppose in their accounts, the physical makeup and causal properties of an object place almost no constraints on which program(s) the object instantiates (under some instantiation function). Indeed any object (of sufficient complexity) will instantiate virtually any program you choose under some mathematically possible instantiation function.

Again, this problem with the "standard textbook definition" of computation that functionalists characteristically accept, is that "the physics is irrelevant [to the question of what program(s) a thing instantiates] except insofar as it admits of the assignments of O's and 1's and of state transitions between them" (Searle, 1990c, p.26): the trouble is that in the absence of any psychological or other constraints on admissible instantiation functions, the computational properties of a thing come almost entirely unconnected from its actual construction and causal connections. Thus, the obligatory obeisances paid to the material and causal characteristics of computers by textbook accounts are misleadingly beside the point. Pylyshyn, for instance, informs us, unhelpfully,

A computer is a physical object whose properties vary over time in accordance with the laws of physics. In principle one might characterize a computer's dynamic behavior as a causally connected sequence of physical state descriptions, with transitions subsumed under various physical laws. (Pylyshyn 1984, p.55)

Very few of the physically discriminable properties of the machine are relevant to its computational function -- for example, its color, temperature, and mass, as well as its very fast or very slow electrical fluctuations, variations in electrical properties above or below relevant ranges, variations in electrical properties that are within tolerance levels, and so on. .... Thus in a given computer only a minuscule subset of physically discriminable states are computationally discriminable. Of course each of the infinitely many sequences of physical descriptions could correspond to some computational sequence. At least in principle there is nothing to prevent such an interpretation. In other words, computational states are relativized to some convenient mapping, which I shall call the instantiation function (IF). By mapping from physical to computational states, such a function provides a way of interpreting a sequence of nomologically governed physical state changes as a computation, and therefore of viewing a physical object as a computer. (Pylyshyn 1984, p.55).

The same principle that implies multiple realizability would seem to imply universal realizability. If computation is defined in terms of the assignment of syntax then everything would be a digital computer, because any object whatever could have syntactical ascriptions made to it. You could describe anything in terms of 0's and 1's. (1990c, p.26)

4. Conclusion

Endnotes

1. Searle, like Descartes, identifies thought with consciousness
2. I assume the following standard notational conventions: "&" for "and" (conjunction), "v" for "or" (disjunction); "-" for "not" (negation), "->" for "if ... then" (material implication), "<->" for "if and only if" (material equivalence), (x) for "all x" (universal quantification), "(3x)" for "some x" (existential quantification).
3. Take "P" to be some program attribution and "M" to be some mental attribution: read "(x)(Px <-> Mx)," then, as "x implements (or runs) program P if and only if x has mental property M" and read "(x)(Px -> Mx)" as "If x implements (or runs) program P then x has mental property M."
4. TI-1706 is a registered trademark of Texas Instruments.
5. Though Searle characterizes the "point of the parable about the Chinese room" as being to reveal that "from syntax alone you can't get the mental [semantic] content" (Searle 1989a, p. 147) and commentators have by and large accepted this notion that "Searle's thought experiment is devoted to shoring up axiom 3 [the claim that syntax is not sufficient for semantics] specifically" (Churchland & Smith Churchland 1990, p. 34), I suggest (in Chapter 3, Section 4.3) that the relation of the logical and evidential support between Searle's experiment and this "axiom" of Searle's argument might better be understood as the reverse: the axiom is needed to shore up the experiment.
6. This appearance is deceiving. Descartes actually seems to hold that the unity of minds is such that it's all or nothing: minds either have all these powers (or at least all the purely intellectual ones) or none (i.e., don't exist). A res cogitans is not a thing that doubts or understands, etc., but one which doubts and understands, etc.
7. This is a controversial point to which I return in Chapter 6.
8. Possible modal construals will be canvassed in Chapter 3, subsection 4.2, below.
9. Herb Hendry points out (personal communication) that S1 yields a valid argument for C1 independently of A1, in conjunction with A2 and A3 alone. Hendry also points out that replacing A3 with the weaker (3x)-Sx still yields a valid argument (assuming S1 and A2) for C1. Whether these observations impugn the reconstruction of Searle's argument set forth here or evidence instead the logical imperspicuity of Searle's argument (as I believe) depends on whether more perspicuous reconstructions are available. Reasons for resisting Hendry's suggestion that Searle's A3 should be rendered (x)(Fx -> -Sx) -- its evident falsity and inconsistency with other theses Searle seems to hold -- are considered in subsection 3.4, below. Hendry's suggestion that conclusion C1 be similarly strengthened to (x)(Px -> -Mx) likewise seems objectionable. Not only would this stronger conclusion not follow if Hendry's supposed strengthening of A3 is not admitted, but (x)(Px -> -Mx) like (x)(Fx -> -Sx) is inconsistent with other claims Searle seems to accept: (x)(Px -> -Mx) in conjunction with S1 (which Searle apparently accepts) entails (x)-Mx -- there are no minds! -- which Searle plainly does not accept. Hendry notes that the conclusion -(x)(Px -> Mx) -- which asserts that at least one program is not a mind -- seems too weak. I agree, and argue (in subsection 3.5, below) that to avoid such trivialization of the conclusion the programs at issue need to be understood to be, just the (partial) Turing test passing programs or a subset of these.
10. SAM is the acronym of Schank and Abelson's "Script Applier Mechanism" (Schank & Abelson 1977), the story understanding program Searle is supposed to be implementing (by hand tracing) in the Chinese room thought experiment. (Chapter 3, note 2, provides a fuller description of SAM.)
11. Subsection 3.9, below, explicates the "standard textbook definition" Searle alleges (rightly I think) to have these consequences.
12. The direct alternative, (x)(Px -> -Sx), is canvassed in Chapter 3, subsection 4.3, below.
13. I agree with Hendry (personal communication) that this supplanting of A3 seems contrary to Searle's understanding of his own argument (contrary to the purported relation of support by the experiment (CRE) for the allegedly crucial premise A3). But note, this is not the only oddity about A3 and the support supposedly provided for it by the CRE. One further oddity in this connection is this: the occupant of the Chinese room seems to exemplify not merely a formalism without semantics, but -- more directly -- to instantiate a program yet lack semantics: CRE provides more direct and compelling warrant for conclusion C1 than for the premise A3 Searle claims CRE supports. These issues are taken up in Chapter 3, subsection 4.3, below.
14. I owe this "partial Turing test" designation to Jon Sticklen.
15. Perhaps Turing machine functionalism can be construed as an essentialist doctrine (cf. Putnam 1975) proposing that the "microstructure" constitutive of minds is computationally specifiable; that decomposition of mental processes into elementary data processes (as with Turing machine specifications) amounts to characterization of their essential "internal structure."
16. I consider an alternative modal reconstruction of Searle's conclusion, []-(x)(Px -> Mx) (understanding `[]' to signify metaphysical or temporal or causal necessity), in the next chapter (subsection 4.2).
17. I.e., the subset of programs I previously distinguished as "Programs" (with a capital `P').
18. Rich Hall (personal communication) points out the similarity of considerations supporting this virtually universal realizability result for computer programs to considerations advanced by Goodman and Quine in "Steps Toward a Constructive Nominalism." Goodman and Quine observe, "The stock of available inscriptions [for nominalist construction] can be vastly increased if we include, not only those that have colors or sounds contrasting with the surroundings, but all appropriately shaped spatio-temporal regions even though they be indistinguishable from their surroundings in color, sound, texture, etc. But the number and length of inscriptions will still be limited insofar as the spatio-temporal world itself is limited" (Goodman & Quine 1947, p. 175).
19. Putnam (1988, Appendix) purports to prove what seems an even stronger result that "there is a sense in which everything has every functional organization."