Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays Vol 1 Metaphysics and epistemology (Mod. Stud. in P... Book

We have here a little big book about the deep, hard, mind body problem and the AI.

The interesting here is that Searle takes a intermediate way ,between the reductionist physicalism that denies that we have inherently subjetive conscient mental states, and that they were so reals and so irreductibles as any other thing in the universe, and the dualism.

The book is divided in six parts.
The first is devoted to the mind- brain problem,Searle claims that there are four features of the mental phenomenology that have made really hard this matter, and the features are : the consciousness,the intentionality,the subjectivity and thr mental causation.
In few words the autor says that the mind is a emergent phenomenon of the fisical brain,is a new fact rised up of the collectivity of the pieces that form it.The whole is more that the sum of parts
As an example of emergence we have the ice that is a new state upsurged of the community of the electromagnetic interactions of the wáter molecules, or a termite mound that is a new thing that emerges of the collective phisical and chemical interactions of the termites comunity.
As without wáter molecules there is not ice, or as without termites there is not termite mound, so without brain there is not mind.
The emergent phenomenon is difficult to explain by the properties of the parts,is not evident the existence of a termite mound by observing isolated termites.
The matter is so neccesary for the existence of the mind.

The second part is entitled: Can a computer think?.
Here Searle is a brillian oponent tho the strong AI in the sense that to proces information formally is not enought to have mental processes in the human sense.
In brief his reasoning is that the brains works with sintaxis and semantics,the computer programs work only with formal sintaxis that isnt enought for semantics,they use the significant not the mean.The computer programs are defined by its formal or sinctactic structure.
By that any computer program running in a computer isnt enought to generate a mind.
Searle by this claims that the brain cant be only a digital computer, it cant be reduced to a formal algoritm,the brain in its architecture as in its "operative system"is different of a digital processor.
But he dont denies that artificial minds can be build ,ever that they have a architecture a complexity and a eficiency equivalent to the human brain.
To make clear the fact that a formal sintaxis cant think Searle put the famous example of "the chinesse room"
As a universal Turing machine is the basis of the digital computers, the conclusión seems to be that none Turing machine could have a mind.

In the third part searle makes a critic to the cognitivism ,and in brief he puts the example of a watch,Suposse the ancient humans find a spring mechanical watch that measures the time, but it is enclosed in a unaccesible box, and they are unable of open it to study it and know it inner working, then in a try to understand the inner working of the watch the humans build a sand watch that it also efficiently measures the time.
Could claim us from this that the humans have now a better knowledge of the inner working of the watch in the box?.

The fourth part is about of the structure of the action.
The fifth part is about of the social sciences perspective.
Personally I have found this parts less relevants, as for sake of brevity I will not review they.

The sixth part is about the free Will.
For Searle this a very hard problem,he claims that the concept of free will is only applicable to conscient beings and that at a very fundamental level it dont exist as our mental states are determined at microphysical levels but that the sense of free will is in some way a appareance,a sensation that is hard wired to our intentional human behaviour.

A strongly recomended book to everybody interested in the mind body problem.