Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Further Reading 477objbegin to see the foundations of a sophisticated new way of conceiving of ourselvesboth as free and rational agents, choosing and deciding our courses of action, and asentirely physical denizens of a physical environment, as much subject to the "laws ofnature" as any plant or inanimate ect.For more commentary on Searle's "Minds, Brains and Programs," see the September1980 issue of The Behavioral and Brain Sciences in which it appeared. Searle's referencesare to the books and articles by Weizenbaum, Winograd, Fodor, and Schank and Abelsonalready mentioned in this chapter, and to Allen Newell and Herbert Simon, "GPS: AProgram that Simulates Human Thought," in E. Feigenbaum and J. Feldman, eds.,Computers and Thought (New York: McGraw Hill, 1963); John McCarthy, "AscribingMental Qualities to Machines," in Ringle's Philosophical Perspectives in ArtificialIntelligence, and Searle's own papers, "Intentionality and the Use of Language," in A.Margolit, ed., Meaning and Use (Hingham, Mass.: Reidel, 1979), and "What is anIntentional State?" in Mind (vol. 88, 1979, pp. 74-92).What it means to think in a language (or in several) is explored from a literaryperspective in George Steiner's After Babel (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975) andfrom a scientific perspective in The Bilingual Brain, by Martin L. Albert and Loraine K.Obler (New York: Academic Press, 1978). Simulation and emulation in computer scienceare lucidly explained in Andrew Tanenbaum's excellent text, Structured ComputerOrganization (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1976).Bennett and Chaitin's mathematical theory of the limits on the speed of evolution ofcomplex systems is sketched in G. J. Chaitin, "Algorithmic Information Theory," IBMJournal of Research and Development (vol. 21, no. 4, 1977, pp. 350-359).For recent versions of dualism, see Karl Popper and John Eccles, The Self and Its Brain(New York: Springer-Verlag, 1977), and- Dennett's (caustic) review, in the Journal ofPhilosophy (vol. 76, (2), 1979, pp. 91-98). A keystone of Eccles's dualistic theory isBenjamin Libet's experimental work on the timing of the perception of stimuli (Science,vol. 158, 1967, pp. 1597-1600). This work has been vigorously criticized by PatriciaChurchland in "On the Alleged Backwards Referral of Experiences and its Relevance tothe Mind-Body Problem," in Philosophy of Science (vol. 48, no. 1, 1981). See Libet'sresponse to Churchland: "The Experimental Evidence for a Subject Referral of a SensoryExperience, Backwards in Time: Reply to P. S. Churchland" (vol. 48, (2), 1981) andChurchland's Response to Libet (vol. 48, (3), 1981). Libet's work is also criticallydiscussed by Chris Mortensen in "Neurophysiology and Experiences" in the AustralasianJournal of Philosophy (1980, pp. 250-264).Part V. Created Selves and Free Will