Putnam, Searle and Boden on Mental Cognition versus Machine Cognition: The Journey back to the Beginning
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Date
2019
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LWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research
Abstract
The main question of this paper is to account for the
nature of mental states. Putnam’s hypothesis opines
that the nature of mental states is analogous to the
nature of machine states. Searle challenges Putnam’s
hypothesis in the Chinese room experiment. The
experiment shows that it is indeed possible to satisfy
Putnam’s requirements for having a particular mental
state without having the mental states in question.
The question which is being pressed in this paper is
whether, in view of Boden’s position, what actually
constitutes meaning of codes and symbols, or
whether codes and symbols, have independent
meanings different from the transferred ones?. This is
to examine whether Searle’s arguments still maintains
its plausibility against Putnam’s computational
hypothesis of the mind. The paper concludes that
from Boden’s view, Searle’s justification for his
challenge only raises the original question; the
question concerning the nature of mental states.