Issue 20(1) of JET is now complete, with Jamie Cullen’s article on the Chinese Room thought experiment, plus reviews of Watchmen and Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True.

Russell Blackford “Book review: Jerry A. Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True”

Marcelo Rinesi “Film review: Watchmen”

Jamie Cullen “The Three Minds Argument”

Abstract: Searle (1980, 2002, 2006) has long maintained a position that non-biologically based machines (including robots and digital computers), no matter how intelligently they may appear to behave, cannot achieve “intentionality” or “consciousness,” have a “mind,” and so forth. Standard replies to Searle’s argument, as commonly cited by researchers in Artificial Intelligence and related communities, are sometimes considered unsatisfactory by readers outside of such fields. One possible reason for this is that the Chinese Room Argument makes a strong appeal to some people’s intuitions regarding “understanding” and necessary conditions for consciousness. Rather than contradict any such intuitions or conditions, I present what in my view is an independent and largely compatible intuition: If Searle’s argument is sound, then surely a human placed under similar testing conditions as a non-biological machine should succeed where a machine would allegedly fail. The outcome is a new rebuttal to the Chinese Room that is ideologically independent of one’s views on the necessary and sufficient conditions for having a “mind.”