Crazy Realizations

One can "construct a computer using a roll of toilet paper and a pile of small stones. Similarly, the Chinese story understanding-program can be programmed into a sequence of water pipes, a set of wind machines, or a monolingual English speaker, none of which thereby acquires an understanding of Chinese. Stones, toilet paper, wind, and water pipes are the wrong kind of stuff to have intentionally in the first place -- only something that has the same causal powers as brains can have intentionality ..." (P 282a)


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Richard Lee, rlee@uark.edu, last modified: 20 November 2002