1 Prompts
Prompt 1. Briefly reconstruct and explain Searle’s Chinese Room Argument. Then either (a) defend Searle’s conclusion or (b) try to show that the argument fails to establish its conclusion.
If you choose (a), be sure to present and respond to the strongest objection you can find to a premise or the structure of Searle’s argument.
If you choose (b), be sure to consider the strongest objection to your objection.
For this prompt make sure to have read Searle’s “Minds, Brains, and Programs” (includ- ing much of the Open Peer Commentary included with the version hosted at Canvas) and his “Is the Brain’s Mind a Computer Program”. Also read the Churchlands’ “Could a Machine Think” and Newell’s and Simon’s “Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry”.
Prompt 2. Paul Churchland argues that the kinds of mental states described by folk psy- chology (beliefs, desires, etc.) “are a serious candidate for outright elimination”. Ex- plain what Churchland means by this and present his strongest argument for this con- clusion. Then either (a) defend this argument from its strongest objection or (b) present the strongest objection to it and defend your objection to its own strongest objection
Make sure to have read Churchland’s “Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes” as well as enough of his “On the Nature of Theories” to understand something of how connectionist networks might throw doubt on the existence of proposition/sentence- like mental representations. Also make sure to read Dennett’s “The Intentional Stance” and Fodor and Pylyshyn’s “Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture”.
Prompt 3. Come up with your own argumentative-essay topic.
Make sure to clear your essay topic with your TA, and make sure to discuss your essay
with me and your TA before the draft peer-review assignment.
1
2
0 comments