p.5 My car and my adding machine, on the other hand, understand
nothing: they are not in that line of business... I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed
computer understands what the car and the adding machine understand, namely, exactly nothing. The
computer understanding is not just (like my understanding of German) partial or incomplete; it is zero.
p.11 But the main point of the present argument is that no purely
formal model will ever be sufficient by itself for intentionality because the formal properties are not by themselves
constitutive of intentionality, and they have by themselves no causal powers except the power, when instantiated, to produce
the next stage of the formalism when the machine is running.
p.11 "But could something think, understand, and so on solely in
virtue of being a computer with the right sort of program? Could instantiating a program, the right program of course,
by itself be a sufficient condition of understanding?"
This I think is the right question to ask, though it is usually confused
with one or more of the earlier questions, and the answer to it is no.
"Why not?"
Because the formal symbol manipulations by themselves don't
have any intentionality; they are quite meaningless; they aren't even symbol manipulations, since the symbols don't
symbolize anything. In the linguistic jargon, they have only a syntax but no semantics. Such intentionality as computers
appear to have is solely in the minds of those who program them and those who use them, those who send in the input
and those who interpret the output.
p.12 only something that has the same causal powers as brains can have intentionality
p.12 Why on earth would anyone suppose that a computer simulation
of understanding actually understood anything?
p.14 the strong AI project hasn't got a chance. The project is to reproduce
and explain the mental by designing programs, but unless the mind is not only conceptually but empirically independent of
the brain you couldn't carry out the project, for the program is completely independent of any realization.
p.14 Of course the brain is a digital computer. Since everything is
a digital computer, brains are too. The point is that the brain's causal capacity to produce intentionality cannot consist
in its instantiating a computer program, since for any program you like it is possible for something to instantiate that program
and still not have any mental states. Whatever it is that the brain does to produce intentionality, it cannot consist
in instantiating a program since no program, by itself, is sufficient for intentionality.
