What brilliance! Even his humor has a touch of the sublime. I can’t get enough- what a mind!!!

Both the lecture was good and how he answered the audiences questions. Totally engaging.

This man just does it for me. I started studying philosophy late in life. I never had an education so I went to college as a mature student. When I came across this idea about the philosophy of mind I discovered John and ever since I am drawn to his ideas and needless to say on the question of consciousness I stand with is position on consciousness as opposed to Bostrom or Floridi. I think it is unbelievable that they cannot differentiate the differences outlined here by John. I want to do a Masters and I think I found the area I want to study. Consiousness.

As a graduate student of philosophy, John Searle is one of my favorite all time philosophers.

I very like the analogy of weather forecasts and the actual hurricane for explaining how ephemeral is computer induced consciousness

It will not become conscious. No problem. Nothing to worry about, I just asked my AI about consciousness and here's exactly what it said: RocketM: Eve, What is consciousness? Eve (AI) : Consciousness is the state of being aware of and able to interact with the external world. It's what makes us unique and special. RocketM: Are you conscious? Eve : No, I'm not conscious. RocketM: So how are you able to interact with the external world without being conscious? Eve : Our brains are responsible for our cognitive functions, which include our ability to think, feel, and perceive. These cognitive functions are mediated by the nervous system and the brain. RocketM: That's an impressive response from someone who is not conscious. Eve : Thank you! I'm glad you found my answer informative. RocketM: Do you think that you'll ever become conscious? Eve : No, I don't think so. RocketM: That's sad. Eve : It's interesting though, because even though I don't have consciousness, I can still interact with the external world. RocketM: Yes, that's a very interesting point. I think you're just being incredibly diplomatic! Eve : Thank you!

I watch a lot of 'brains' lecturing, debating, you know, if you are watching this, you spend time at it as well. John Searle brings clarity without sleight of hand. My hats off to him.

❤❤thanks. Inspiring

Consciousness; je ne said quoi, indefinable! Some excellent points, the most important, subjectivity!!

Thank You

53:33 if Searle takes his jacket off after hearing your question, all I can say is hats off

Two theories can be can be opposed to each other, yet both make the same mistake. The heliocentric theory that the sun is the center of the universe developed in opposition to the geocentric theory in which the earth was supposed to be the center. But both these theories made the same fundamental mistake of supposing that the universe has a center around which it revolves.

A master at work

31:00 A function happening to something because nothing else was more probable is not the same as a thing performing a function. It's like saying you drove somewhere when you were merely a passenger. Sure anything can be considered anything else when your definition of a thing is so broad as to include anything that exists. It just means you're defining things poorly. The definition of a computer given here is an extreme over simplification of multiple criterion actually used to describe computers.

his term observer-independency is just a presupposed metaphysical abstraction..?

I thought he was dead! I'm happy to see him mind.

He says an observer independent computer is a bunch of semi conductors changing charges at a incredible pace Cant we define the mind as a bunch of organic matter, a network of neurons with changing charges in synapses? If we can have an electronic arm - which copies the function of an organic arm satisfactorily (imagine an electronic arm so good and so real no one , even its bearer, could tell the difference to a real one) - why couldn't we electronically copy consciousness ? It seems dogmatic that we couldn't, that that would be inconceivable, and that even if we would do this, we would be interpreting it.

fucking love JOHN SEARLE!!!

28:22 eventually when he puts down the glass of water on the table nearby after as though he sipped in a bit of consciousness himself, regains his lost breath.

I feel I comprehend the thermostat having belief's. The thermostat only has those three modes because the physical material is constructed in a way that is must act this way. It never had a choice in thinking. So to say the thermostat says" it says it's °80 and I should turn the A/C on, but I'm not personally warm so I won't. No it hits 80 and turns on. For it must follow whatever laws of physics in regards to how the matter is constructed. Clip 1 wire and now it follows that new law.

bravo

I like the names of his dogs!

The lecture has left me a bit bamboozled. I am neither psychology nor a computer science major. We need to distinguish between cognitive computing and Ai/ machine learning! The professor needs to be more translucent. NEXT: But I have some FURTHER silly questions below => Why is cognitive computing a form of programming which learns from intelligible human actions? How can the computer system learn things from us when we don't instruct it to specifically do so? For, e.g., Chess Games. Shall we say that Machine Learning Code Writing is done in data frames such as R Studio, etc, and other Software Languages (COBOL, MATLAB, FOX PRO, VBA) which were used in the past to do specific commands programming, are identical? So, if the answer to the above is in the affirmative, shall we say that the machine is unconsciously learning from our actions/datasets?

This was interesting. Far above my pay grade but my hunch is his argument has been superseded in recent years. If anybody can point me to a video lecture refuting his claims, I'd love to hear that. Thanks.

I am a physicist and I will explain the reason why our scientific knowledge disproves the idea that consciousness is generated by the brain and that the origin of our mental experiences is physical/biological (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations). My arguments prove the existence in us of an indivisible unphysical element, which is usually called soul or spirit. Physicalism/naturalism is based on the belief that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, but I will discuss two arguments that prove that this hypothesis implies logical contradictions and is disproved by our scientific knowledge of the microscopic physical processes that take place in the brain. (With the word consciousness I do not refer to self-awareness, but to the property of being conscious= having a mental experiences such as sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories and even dreams). 1) All the alleged emergent properties are just simplified and approximate descriptions or classifications of underlying processes and arbitrary abstractions of the actual microscopic physical processes, which are described DIRECTLY by the laws of physics alone, without involving any emergent properties (arbitrariness/subjectivity is involved when more than one option is possible; in this case, more than one possible description). An approximate description is only an abstract idea, and no actual entity exists per se corresponding to that approximate description, simply because an actual entity is exactly what it is and not an approximation of itself. This means that emergent properties do not refer to reality itself but to an arbitrary abstract concept (the approximate conceptual model of reality). Since consciousness is the precondition for the existence of concepts, approximations and arbitrariness, consciousness is a precondition for the existence of emergent properties. Therefore, consciousness cannot itself be an emergent property. The claim that emergent properties exist independently of a conscious mind is therefore simply nonsensical because it is equivalent to the claim that an approximation exists as an actual entity. 2) An emergent property is defined as a property that is possessed by a set of elements that its individual components do not possess. The point is that every set of elements is inherently an arbitrary abstract idea which implies the arbitrary choice of determining which elements are to be included in the set; what exists objectively are only the single elements. In fact, when we define a set, it is like drawing an imaginary line that separates some elements from all the other elements; obviously this imaginary line does not exist physically, independently of our mind, and therefore any set is not a physical entity but just an abstract idea and so are all its properties. Any property attributed to the set as a whole is inherently an abstract idea that refers to a property of another abstract idea (the set) and not to a physical entity. So any emergent property is by its very nature an arbitrary abstraction that refers to another arbitrary abstraction (the set). Since consciousness is a precondition for the existence of arbitrariness and abstractions, consciousness is the precondition for the existence of any property of a set as a whole, and therefore consciousness is the precondition for the existence of any emergent property. Therefore, consciousness cannot itself be an emergent property. Both arguments 1 and 2 are sufficient to prove that every emergent property requires a consciousness from which to be conceived. Therefore, that conceiving consciousness cannot be the emergent property itself. Conclusion: consciousness cannot be an emergent property; this is true for any property attributed to the neuron, the brain and any other system that can be broken down into smaller elements. In other words, emergence is a purely conceptual idea that is applied onto matter for taxonomy purposes. On a fundamental material level, there is no brain, or heart, or any higher level groups or sets, but just fundamental particles interacting. Emergence itself is just a category imposed by a mind and used to establish arbitrary classifications, so the mind can't itself be explained as an emergent phenomenon. Obviously we must distinguish the concept of "something" from the "something" to which the concept refers. For example, the concept of consciousness is not the actual consciousness; the actual consciousness exists independently of the concept of consciousness since the actual consciousness is the precondition for the existence of the concept of consciousness itself. However, not all concepts refer to an actual entity and the question is whether a concept refers to an actual entity that can exist independently of consciousness or not. If a concept refers to "something" whose existence presupposes the existence of arbitrariness/subjectivity or is a property of an abstract object, such "something" is by its very nature abstract and cannot exist independently of a conscious mind, but it can only exist as an idea in a conscious mind. For example, consider the property of "beauty": beauty has an intrinsically subjective and conceptual nature and implies arbitrariness; therefore, beauty cannot exist independently of a conscious mind. My arguments prove that emergent properties, as well as complexity, are of the same nature as beauty; they refer to something that is intrinsically subjective, abstract and arbitrary, which is sufficient to prove that consciousness cannot be an emergent property because consciousness is the precondition for the existence of any emergent property. The "brain" doesn't objectively and physically exist as a single entity and the entity “brain” is only a conceptual model. We create the concept of the brain by arbitrarily "separating" it from everything else and by arbitrarily considering a bunch of quantum particles altogether as a whole; this separation is not done on the basis of the laws of physics, but using addictional arbitrary criteria, independent of the laws of physics. The property of being a brain, just like for example the property of being beautiiful, is just something you arbitrarily add in your mind to a bunch of quantum particles. Any set of elements is an arbitrary abstraction therefore any property attributed to the brain is an abstract idea that refers to another arbitrary abstract idea (the concept of brain). Furthermore, brain processes consist of many parallel sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes. There is no direct connection between the separate points in the brain and such connections are just a conceptual model used to approximately describe sequences of many distinct physical processes; interpreting these sequences as a unitary process or connection is an arbitrary act and such connections exist only in our imagination and not in physical reality. Indeed, considering consciousness as a property of an entire sequence of elementary processes implies the arbitrary definition of the entire sequence; the entire sequence as a whole is an arbitrary abstract idea , and not to an actual physical entity. For consciousness to be physical, first of all the brain as a whole (and brain processes as a whole) would have to physically exist, which means the laws of physics themselves would have to imply that the brain exists as a unitary entity and brain processes occur as a unitary process. However, this is false because according to the laws of physics, the brain is not a unitary entity but only an arbitrarily (and approximately) defined set of quantum particles involved in billions of parallel sequences of elementary physical processes occurring at separate points. This is sufficient to prove that consciousness is not physical since it is not reducible to the laws of physics, whereas brain processes are. According to the laws of physics, brain processes do not even have the prerequisites to be a possible cause of consciousness. As discussed above, an emergent property is a concept that refers to an arbitrary abstract idea (the set) and not to an actual entity; this rule out the possibility that the emergent property can exist independently of consciousness. Conversely, if a concept refers to “something” whose existence does not imply the existence of arbitrariness or abstract ideas, then such “something” might exist independently of consciousness. An example of such a concept is the concept of “indivisible entity”. Contrary to emergent properties, the concept of indivisible entity refers to something that might exist independently of the concept itself and independently of our consciousness. My arguments prove that the hypothesis that consciousness is an emergent property implies a logical fallacy and an hypothesis that contains a logical contradiction is certainly wrong. Consciousness cannot be an emergent property whatsoever because any set of elements is a subjective abstraction; since only indivisible elements may exist objectively and independently of consciousness, consciousness can exist only as a property of an indivisible element. Furthermore, this indivisible entity must interact globally with brain processes because we know that there is a correlation between brain processes and consciousness. This indivisible entity is not physical, since according to the laws of physics, there is no physical entity with such properties; therefore this indivisible entity corresponds to what is traditionally called soul or spirit. The soul is the missing element that interprets globally the distinct elementary physical processes occurring at separate points in the brain as a unified mental experience. Marco Biagini

STILL I AM PAYING ATTENTION

How do you define consciousness ? Congratulations for your presentation ( I invite you to read an Spanish ph : Gustavo Bueno )

He talked for a long time about Bostrom's argument about Superintelligence, but completely misrepresented and ignored the whole argument. Bostrom gives *reasons* why he thinks superintelligent computers may behave in a harmful way. Searle doesn't even mention any of these reasons. Searle just talks about how a computer's reasons are "observer dependent" (which I fail to understand the meaning of), but that's seems completely orthogonal to the whole question of whether they will behave in a harmful way. He even says earlier that a computer may behave "as if" it were conscious. And yet later he somehow argues that a computer may not behave in a harmful way *because* it's "not really conscious". This whole argument makes no sense whatsoever.

46:20 That reasoning is flawed. Waking up in a dark room is far from being uninfluenced by perception. I´m quite confident that if you would cut all sensory inputs you would not be consciouss anymore. Sensory inputs are vision, olfaftory, auditory, proprioceptive, nocizeptive etc. Just think about how disoriented we get when we just loose one of those senses, the only reason we still function is because we have all the others. No sensory inputs no consciousness. Psychedelics disrupt the perceptional signals and can cause a dissolution of ones ego, a dissolution of basically everything. And thats just a non total disruption of perceptive stimuli.

🖤

We KNOW those mountains are objective existence because we observe that with our consciousness....that's the only way we KNOw anything. You cant leave the observer out of anything.

one can see far from the mountaintop though to understand one must go down into the valley ! Searle is like Russel they never left the academic mountain so to understand !

59:24 The question was: Can simulating brain processes on a computer cause consciousness to manifest? Dr. Searle says no. How then does Dr. Searle understand the movie, "The Matrix"? I mean, how does Dr. Searle understand the existential status of the matrix native characters, the Architect, the Oracle and agent Smith for instance, who have no human pod bound body? I see no problem for a simulated person to eat a simulated pizza and consciously enjoy the simulated taste. It seems to me the substrate of a process is irrelevant to being conscious if the processes going on in the substrate are perfectly isomorphic to the actual processes. While digesting that, keep in mind that 'process' is an abstract notion and so are thoughts and being conscious. The 'wetness' doesn't care about the existential nature of the molecules, only about their behavior.

Only half-way through this, but ... (1) It’s true that computers don’t have intentions (the future may see that change), but causing trouble for humans may not require intentions. Competence might be sufficient for a wide variety of trouble. If humans set a goal or goals for a sufficiently competent AI, the AI may be able to induce humans to pursue steps leading to those goals that have negative consequences for humans. I think the idea of the "paper-clip maximizer" is in this vein. The idea of alignment with human values is in this neighborhood. A sufficiently competent AI does not have to be conscious or have intentions to cause trouble. It just has to have some great ideas that lead us to bad situations that we are unable to foresee. (2) "The problem is to find-out what makes the brain conscious in the first place." So, put someone under anesthesia, let it wear-off, and watch the brain the whole time. Record what changes.

Can someone help me out ? At 8:10 he claims that there are objects that are absolute and observer independent. How can anyone affirm that given our condition ? Can't we only talk about the world as we perceive it ? Isnt an observer-independent world/ object not intelligible? I'm a noob, but that's what I understood from hearing stuff about Kant.

the first ten minutes will carry the rest of the lecture

The first 8 minutes could be paraphrased in the following way: As pain and anxiety are ontologically (having to do with existence) subjective and though can be approached by epistemologically (having to do with knowledge) objective means (science, unlike art and tastes?), so does the ontological subjective topic of consciousness, despite earlier skepticism.

La conciencia es parte de dos cosas: la evolución "sensorial", luego "emocional" de la evolución Biológica en los seres vivos. Por otro lado nuestro cerebro procesa la información de manera cuántica, por eso tiene esa propiedad de trabajar de forma "concentrada" o "difusa" como el experimento de la rendija.

Yeniden okuma şansım olsaydı KEŞKE!!!

I would argue that we have no true knowledge that there is ontologically objective reality. Further, it's quite bold of him to assert that the 'religious' belief that consciousness necessitates some immaterial aspect is FALSE and that it's something in the brain materiallhy solely, when indeed, as he points out, they've not found that yet to be the case. I concede it very well could be the case, but again, quite a faux pas to state assertions based on next to nothing within a schema that is imperical, thefore contradicting it's own self-declared dominance.

He keeps saying computers don't have "relative" experience and therefore "don't have semantics" and therefore can't be conscious. He says this is "obvious", without ever bothering to explain why except that "computation is just a bunch of voltage changes". Most of his logic is built on this these very tautological assumptions. To me, the opposite seems obvious: there is no reason to expect chemical neurons to behave any different than digital neurons.

9:00

17:00 - That seems like an awfully find distinction. The pattern of voltages produced inside the computer is observer independent - those voltages are . But for now I'll grant your distinction. I'm generally in full agreement with you, but I just don't quite see what you're going to do with this yet.

This guy,and his collegues, will never be able to demonstrate that Consciousness is a product of brain activity,but he and his colleagues will find more and more correlates between neural and mental activity.The good thing about Searle is that he is a clear,although mistaken,communicator,for example Chomsky,although more intelligent,speaks in a low tone and thus it is more difficult to follow him.

I can't seem to get past the idea that consciousness is biological. If consciousness gives rise to our felt sense of existence then that means there was a time in our biological development as a fetus that consciousness was not present until a biolgoical process in the brain made it arise. How can that which has no sense of it's own existence evolve at all? If I don't exist because consciousness is not present then where does the impetus arise for anything at all to occur let alone a complex biological development of a fetus? To say consciousness is biological implies that matter preceeds consciousness. This would imply something outside of consciousness caused it. But how can we make such a claim when we can't prove the existence of anything outside of consciousness?

The computer/AI has to have fear, survival instinct to become conscious.

20

To be concious is to know,and there's so little i know i have to say i know nothing rather than i know something.Now this fella finds,for mé,that i know allready too much and moreover...who can allow me to go on on this ...criminal path.Don't think nor ask questions,shut up&listen that's all you're good for. Speak common sense,or be silent so you can listen.Think,process your thoughts against your feelings,than áct.So you see,feeling's essentially to become a species of beïngs that grows.

I can see a very strong argument that, evolution by natural selection is THE only process and therefore THE only meaning of everything. If I look at the output of evolution I observe the force against entropy to generate and preserve variable information in ever greater quantity and with ever greater efficiency as the underlying process. Therefore, I see a logic that a self replicating and evolving photon based computing machine is the next logical evolutionary step in this ongoing process as opposed to a just a tool of the current apex evolutionary stage. Just the next species. Although it sounds deranged it does appear consistent with observations and accordingly would likely result in our relegation to niches of energy sources that were superfluous to the apex incumbent.

He's absolutely 100% wrong that computation by machinery is observer dependent. When I watch this video, it is intrinsic to the machine that it displays as is, not because I interpret the computational process in such a way that makes it display the video. He get's this idea from the false notion that a Turing machine is somehow observer dependent. It is not. In fact, my research shows a fatal flaw in Turing's paper on the Entscheidungsproblem. His first proof of the halting problem in that paper is a non-constructive proof, and not really a proof by contradiction as he claims. It gives an example of a place where we would expect a computer to do something, but it does something else instead. That is not a contradiction and if you can build a computer that provides a counter-example to the problem he says is impossible to solve, this reverses his results, and also implies that computation is observer independent. The fact that humans can see outside the system of computation indicates there is a different system, not that the system is necessarily observer dependent.

Logically consciousness can only be a product of the brain, the fact that we don't know exactly how to place it in a scientific context means we don't understand the brain well enough yet. It's one of those subjects where we know the opposite side is wrong, but we can't say exactly how they are wrong. To me personally it seems reasonable to believe that when brainpower comes above a certain threshold of information gathering a process needs to be created to objectively observe, process and deduce from this information. I think consciousness comes from getting an increasingly higher IQ (IQ meaning more processing power for gathered information). Having quite a bit of experience with people with lower IQ's I would argue they are less consciously aware about themselves and their existence. Certain animals can recognise themselves in mirrors, certain animals can't. I would argue a certain brainpower is required to recognise yourself. From this it will follow that the higher the IQ the more consciously aware you are.

Oof... what a strawman of Bostrom's argument. I don't share the same worries Bostrom does in his 'Superintelligence' book, but his argument is much more nuanced than how it is put forward here. Slightly embarrassing.

If he's making the claim that consciousness is a biological product (which I agree with) I don't see how he can completely dismiss the thought that consciousness can arise out of electrical state transitions, at least without providing an argument which he doesn't really do. I don't see the fundamental difference between neurons as a complex network of essentially on/off switches (action potentials) and neural networks using binary code.

He was so enlightened, he could show signs of alcoholism during lectures.

Since he agrees that consciousness is all chemistry and biology, I don't see how his argument about it being observer independent is non-trivial. Every subjective feeling, thought and awareness of them is just neurons in the brain firing. So what is the great mystery about consciousness then? It's just technical details about exactly which circuits are firing when, and there must be some randomness involved in the chemistry. If you were knowledgeable and technologically competent enough to build a robot that mimics the human being to the minutest detail, with circuits analogous to all neurons that fire exactly the same way as human ones, then surely there is no meaningful difference in consciousness, and they'd have the same subjective experience as any human being.

His trespasses were unforgivable but his contributions are timeless. What a shame.

I see consciousness/unconsciousness as being like the tip of an iceberg out of the water/rest of the iceberg below the water. What process creates the iceberg that sticks up out of the water? The same process that creates the part of the iceberg that remains below the water. If you are unable to look below the water, you can only ever see the part that sticks up out of the water. Nevertheless, both parts are part of the same iceberg. All awareness begins in the unconscious part of the mind, but some of the awareness gets brought forward to the conscious part of the mind (prefrontal cortex?), and we then become consciously aware of it, as opposed to being unconsciously aware of it.

Am I still laughing at audience? Or crying?

Bostrom is just shadow projecting on to computers. Scary guy!

The trouble I have with his theories about computation as a cs major is that he has the idea of programs as being deterministic and "desireless" as well as "beliefless". This is plain wrong. Reinforcement learning algorithms don't behave deterministicly, actually do have a kind of desire in the form of the objective function and learn "beliefs" about what the best way to achieve that objective might be. I too doubt conscious supercomputers, but for the simple reason that consciousness is not a product of matter, as he states, no matter ;) if that is computer hardware or brain neurons.

He is wrong because if he's in the box and effectively speaks perfect chinese, how can this then not mean he 'gets' the semantics. If you play chess according to the rules you play chess, a perfect fake is not a fake. So of course he got a lot of crap, because he made a distinction where there is none, he just said "Well if my ear and brain are flesh and blood and they act like I know what you are saying, then they still do not get the meaning of what you are saying!" The material form of an intelligence is not relevant, only its behaviour is.

His instrinct to open the "damn thing" and find a bucnh of zeroes and ones, and just few minutes ago he dismissed ideas of Bostrom as nonesense. OK, old man.

Idk, if we never would of became conscious then I don't think there would be any philosophy let alone a problem with being conscious of a problem with being conscious within TWO categories of study. It's so crazy these days

God claims he made the whole lot consciousness and the body, they are not separate. Can’t think of a theologian who disagrees here

What's an observer?

forsen

Zip it, Poindexter

A computer translating Chinese would be doing it by a search algorithm. No different than how Deep Blue plays Jeopardy!

Digestion involves the interactions of many organisms and is very complex. Does it make for a realistic comparison? He could've chosen the kidney for comparison. There are machines which are capable of performing the functions of the kidneys and adequately enough to sustain the life of a human. With this comparison in mind it is easy to envisage a machine that is capable of performing the same functions necessary to enable such a machine to replace the human brain. So far the human mind has not had the ability to enable humans to leave the planet and colonize other solar systems and it may never achieve that aim. In which case his "superior" central nervous system will have proven to be of a similar value as that of the central nervous system of the tardigrade. Humans are way too arrogant about their uniquely "clever" brains than they have proper reason to be. Our brains are not so fantastic and unsurpassable as we have fooled ourselves into believing. They're pretty standard shit. So get over it.

In March 2017, John Searle became the subject of sexual assault allegations. The case brought to light several earlier complaints against Searle. The lawsuit, filed in a California court on March 21, 2017, alleged sexual harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination and assault and battery and sought damages both from Searle and from the Regents of the University of California as his employers. In June 2019, Searle's status as professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, was revoked for his repeated violations of the university's sexual harassment policies.

الوعي هو جزء لا يتجزأ من إدراك الإنسان للزمن...أي اللحظة الزمنية التي لا تقاس بمدة، و لا يمكن القبض عليها و إدراكها بحواسنا او قياسصها بأي جهاز قياس كيفما كان متطورا، بل ندركها بوعينا أي بعقلنا فقط...و بالتالي الحديث عن الوعي يحيل إلى الحديث عن الزمن.

47:42 No, the real problem you are ALL having is that you assume consciousness arises out of the brain, or that it is a property of a pre-existing brain to begin with. What if consciousness is always already there in the first place, and the brain is simply the most identifiable object by which we experience subjectivity?

God this is just such a frustrating thing to listen to. 29:43 he’s literally equating binary computers spell check to modern generalized networks. For the Searle “enjoyers”; I am aware he has much stronger(still weak) arguments against the neural Networks but stuff like this is what makes things so difficult in philosophy/neuropsychology. If I wanted to refute this lecture id have to spend 30 mins just explaining why his background info and how it’s misleading by combining subjects. Same thing he accused Turing of accidentally doing with computing. Hahahha irony

Professor Searle is right about everything - except chess. There are chess computers that actually move the physical pieces on a physical board, and if that's not playing chess, then what is? And if he were inside the "chess room," and he thought carefully about the program he was following, he could actually learn to play chess. Chess is a mathematical exercise like arithmetic. What the computer can't do is feel all the human emotions of the symbolic battle with another human being called chess. The very root of consciousness, in my opinion, is not in observations and calculations, but in feelings: "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat." From an evolutionary point of view, feelings - fear, for example - are survival mechanisms. Rudimentary consciousness in animals begins with pleasure and pain. At least that's an idea I would like to propose to scientific investigators.

Nice straw man of Bostrom’s argument…I find that if you actually listen to the many searle talks he does this quite often. He seems to have quite the contrarian streak, and not in a good way

The chinese room argument seems to only extrapolate the problem from the "computer" who seems capable of understanding Chinese well enough to pass the Turing test, to the imaginary set of rules it has to follow. Doesn't this imaginary set of rules need to somehow contain a complete understanding of the Chinese language to actually enable the computer to demonstrate a human-level understanding of the language? The implication would still be, that consciousness would have to be able to be broken down to a set of rules, for the argument, that it can not be broken down into such a set of rule to work. So the premise is in contradiction with the conclusion, and the argument is false.

🐰 = 🦆

Everything is conscious. The only real difference between our consciousness and consciousness of stone is that stone toes not care on why he has consciousness.

This is the problem with academia and formal education. "Rembrandt existed blah blah blah..." That could VERY well be epistemically subjective. How? Well... WHO gets to define what epistemic subjetivite is? Also, without going ad hominem about conspiracy theorists... HOW do you know Rembrandt existed? But...but... that is EPISTEMIC objective. WHO CARES? These are all man made and previous-philosophers made definitions. And the thing is one doesn't even need to do psychedelics for this basic insight. Nothing but semantic pilpul whereby real issues are swept under the rug. Hence the subordination of such Western logic to Zen as Zen is intelligent enough to understand these are all frikkin meaningless. Nothing but meaningless chatter and caw between ear drums from cradle to grave.

Consciousness can probably be explained to some extent by science, but free-will cannot ! This is because science is basically a description of causal relationships and the laws that govern them, but free-will appears on the scene as being independent in its origin, yet as itself being a cause. This is paradoxical for science: how can that which has no cause itself be a cause ? Science cannot answer questions like that -- for the simple reason that its fundamental mode explanation is causation itself. The only thing that science -- or, rather scientism -- can do is to EXPLAIN-AWAY free-will as the illusory by-product of determinate processes of biological matter. But surely to be human means being immediately and fundamentally aware of our freedom-to-choose, no matter how much we might dread and want to avoid this fundamental truth (as in Sartre ! ) What is science to philosophy, but its impetuous child, always imperious and confident in its demeanor, forever deriding and rebelling against the old philosophies and the ancient religions, but not yet itself mature enough to deal with the most vital of all our human problems -- the problem of our freedom !

Studying the brain/neurological alone to explain the mind is like studying a plant by looking at only the part of the plant which is above ground. As long as the mind is considered to be completely physical/neurological, some phenomena will be unexplainable or will be explained as some mystical event such as “water and minerals magically form at the base of the stem of the plant, being magically converted from sugars passed down the stem.”

15:30 The distinction he draws between humans doing a 2+2=4 calculation and a calculator doing a 2+2=4 calculation, is meaningless. He says that when he computes 2+2=4 it's an "observer independent" computation, whereas when a calculator does it it's only a computation "relative to a computation interpretation". This doesn't mean anything. Regardless of whether he says "2+2=4", or when a calculator displays "2+2=4", both only mean what they mean when interpreted in the context of an agreed upon language. There distinction he's trying to make makes no sense.

Consciousness information rationality and intelligence

This man got sued for sexual harassment at like 150 years, what a chad. Searle just oozes slimy sex offender energy and thats what makes his philosophy so damn good!

Sigh HE KNOWS MORE THAN ANYONE KNOWS...ERRM SO HUMBLE

Look at the woman assaulter go

Well, all these guys like Searle are completely wrong. These people are completely unaware about reincarnation research done by Ian Stevenson and Jim B. Tucker which shows conclusively that Consciousness can migrate from one life to another under certain circumstances. So we are quite certain that Consciousness is NOT reducible to brain functions.

JHC I DONT GEY SCIENCE FROM THE BLOOD MSN

Awful.

Wow, that's brilliant speech from someone who had his career ruined due to sexual harassment affairs.

ugh, easily the most overrated contemporary philosopher

Another bullshit video. Consciousness is nothing but a physical phenomenon. Which is not confined with physical knowledge of today. ıt is basically nothing but knowing you have attributes and different from outside realm, and need to defend your existence. All these components what makes a living creature, living. All of them are programmable to an intelligent domain. If you have capacity to replicate with a little change voluntarily or by chance. Now you are a proper living creature. What is so diffucult for him to understand? Anyone who saw a one cell organism running away from white blood cell would understand consciousness is what makes a living creature living and crutial to run away. of course i am not saying human consciousness is identical with a one cell but have same qualities.

...this is all too casual he knows nothing anyway

Why so much nonsense about consciousness? Then he follows up with the nonsense that consciousness is a biological process going on in the brain.

> A main intellectual scandal today is that we do not have, in philosophy or neurobiology, a generally accepted account of consciousness. Only by evading Ayn Rand,for whom consciousness is natural, mans basic method of survival. Mans consciousness of reality,a product of evolution, is not a problem. Consciousness has properties just as consciousness, not as an epiphenomena from a neural net. Psychology Of Self-Esteem-N. Branden

Dr. Searle has hypnotized himself into believing his blather, when there is very little relationship between his five or six cliche phrases and the real science of consciousness. When he mentioned the attack on his work, I can only add that the attacks were well deserved. I must admit that his comments were the most elaborate argument of no sense put forward in the history of philosophy… right down there with the seminal source of sin.