Thomas Nagel

1. Thomas Nagel, "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" (pp. 107-110)

1.  refute reductionism (the philosophical position that a complex system is nothing more than the sum of its parts).

1.  For example, a physicalist reductionist's approach to the mind–body problem holds that the mental process humans experience as consciousness can be fully described via physical processes in the brain and body.
2. an organism had conscious mental states: "if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism

1. the conscious experience is widespread, present in many animals (particularly mammals), and that for an organism to have a conscious experience it must be special, in the sense that its qualia or "subjective character of experience" are unique

1.  “An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism - something that it is like for the organism to be itself.

1. Bats use echolocation to navigate and perceive objects, similar to the human sense of vision, since sonar and vision are regarded as perceptional experiences.

1. While it is possible to imagine what it would be like to fly, navigate by sonar, hang upside down and eat bugs like a bat, that is not the same as a bat's perspective. Nagel claims that even if humans were able to metamorphose gradually into bats, their brains would not have been wired as a bat's from birth; therefore, they would only be able to experience the life and behaviors of a bat, rather than the mindset.
2. “our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience”

 John Searle, "Do Computers Think?" (pp. 110-112)

1. A computer can appear to think but in reality it is just following instructions.

1. Searle explains: a computer only has syntax, whilst for proper thought and understanding there must also be semantics present.
2.  This appearance is just a simulation, and therefore no matter how advanced computing gets, the computer will never really have a mind, and will therefore only simulate and never duplicate.
3. There is the opinion that for a computer to think it must interact with its environment, therefore to build a thinking computer we must attach it to a robot. However such a computer would again only be taking in information in a binary form, manipulating it, and outputting a resultant binary string. There is no thought involved, it receives information from its camera ÔeyeÕ and tells its robotics arm to move, by just following a set of instructions, given to it by a programmer. 

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