Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Minds, Brains and Programs 362on the wall over there had real beliefs, beliefs with direction of fit, propositional content,and conditions of satisfaction; beliefs that had the possibility of being strong beliefs orweak beliefs; nervous, anxious, or beliefs; dogmatic, rational, or superstitious beliefs;blind faiths or hesitant cogitations; any kind of beliefs. The thermostat is not a candidate.Neither is stomach, liver, adding machine, or telephone. However, since we are taking theidea seriously, notice that its truth would be fatal to strong Al's claim to be a science ofthe mind. For now the mind is everywhere. What we wanted to know is whatdistinguishes the mind thermostats and livers. And if McCarthy were right, strong Alwould have a hope of telling us that.2. The Robot Reply (Yale). "Suppose we wrote a different kind program from Schank'sprogram. Suppose we put a computer ins' robot, and this computer would not just take informal symbols as in and give out formal symbols as output, but rather would actuallyope the robot in such a way that the robot does something very much perceiving,walking, moving about, hammering nails, eating, drinking anything you like. The robotwould, for example, have a television era attached to it that enabled it to see, it wouldhave arms and legs enabled it to `act,' and all of this would be controlled by its compu`brain.' Such a robot would, unlike Schank's computer, have genus understanding andother mental states."The first thing to notice about the robot reply is that it tacitly c cedes thatcognition is not solely a matter of formal symbol manipulation since this reply adds a setof causal relations with the outside world Fodor 1980). But the answer to the robot replyis that the addition of "perceptual" and "motor" capacities adds nothing by way ofunderstanding, in particular, or intentionality, in general, to Schank's original gram. Tosee this, notice that the same thought experiment applies to robot case. Suppose thatinstead of the computer inside the robot, put me inside the room and, as in the originalChinese case, you give more Chinese symbols with more instructions in English formatch' Chinese symbols to Chinese symbols and feeding back Chinese symbol to theoutside. Suppose, unknown to me, some of the Chinese sym that come to me come froma television camera attached to the robot other Chinese symbols that I am giving outserve to make the mot inside the robot move the robot's legs or arms. It is important toemphasize that all I am doing is manipulating formal symbols: I know none these otherfacts. I am receiving "information" from the robot's "perceptual" apparatus, and I amgiving out "instructions" to its motor apparatus, without knowing either of these facts. Iam the robot's homunculus, but