PHIL 230 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Behaviorism, Japan Standard Time, Chinese Room
24 Jan 2018
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Document Summary
According to the functionalist mental states are identical to functional roles, which can be played by different brain states. Functional roles are defined by their inputs and outputs. Whatever generates the correct output in response to a particular input is playing a role. Some people realized that if mental states are just functional roles,and if computers can have states that play those functional roles, then computers can have mental states just like our mental states. Searle specifically targets a project in which computers are programmed to understand stories. These programs can be told a story, and then like us they can answer questions about the story even though the information was not explicitly stated in the story. The strong ai fans think that the computer understands the story (in a non-metaphorical sense) Computer scientist and mathematician alan turing proposed a test for computer intelligence called the turing test .
