Minds, Machines and SearleStevanHarnadauthorSearle's celebrated Chinese Room Argument has shaken the
foundations of Artificial Intelligence. Many refutations have been attempted, but
none seem convincing. This paper is an attempt to sort out explicitly the
assumptions and the logical, methodological and empirical points of disagreement.
Searle is shown to have underestimated some features of computer modeling, but
the heart of the issue turns out to be an empirical question about the scope and
limits of the purely symbolic (computational) model of the mind. Nonsymbolic
modeling turns out to be immune to the Chinese Room Argument. The issues
discussed include the Total Turing Test, modularity, neural modeling, robotics,
causality and the symbol-grounding problem. Cognitive PsychologyRoboticsSemanticsPhilosophy of Mind1989Journal (Paginated)