In his book Determined, the biologist Robert Sapolsky presents his case against free will, arguing that because our actions are fully determined by what’s happening in our brains, genes, and environment in the seconds, minutes, and years beforehand, there’s no room for any separate “I” to play a role. As I’ve written about before, this …
The other night, the championship game for my rec basketball league got fairly heated, and during a play late in the game I reacted in a less than ideal way. One of the more talkative players on the other team and I were both chasing down a loose ball, and as I grabbed it his …
If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything. Daniel Dennett Dennett’s quote is a favorite of mine, as it seems to capture much of the nuance of the free will discussion in just a few words. As a proponent of “free will” (at least of the type of free will that he …
Ludwig Wittgenstein: “Tell me, why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went around the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?” His friend: “Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going around the Earth.” Wittgenstein: “Well, what would it have looked like …
Consciousness is a difficult problem to grapple with, mainly due to its inherently subjective nature. We don’t yet understand the brain well enough to say much about how it does anything, let alone to describe how it gives rise to (or doesn’t give rise to) conscious experience. Due to this limitation, we’re currently reliant on …
A Different Perspective on Searle’s Chinese Room Read More »
I recently shared my last post on the Chinese room to Reddit, which led to some productive discussions in the comments. I thought it may be helpful to share some excerpts from one of those threads here, as it provides a slightly different way of thinking about the issue. Hope you find this discourse interesting …
The Chinese Room Argument is a thought experiment designed by John Searle to show why computers are not capable of consciousness or intentionality. For those unfamiliar, Searle’s concise version of the argument goes: “Imagine a native English speaker who knows no Chinese locked in a room full of boxes of Chinese symbols (a data base) …
Consciousness is, and may always be, a slightly thorny subject to discuss. For many people, no physical explanation is suitable, as it never seems to address questions along the lines of “but why does it feel like something to be me? I can think and see things and do things – we need to explain …