Isn't that besides the point? The point is that something would actually burn down.

GP's point is that buring something down is by definition something that requires a specific physical process. It's not obvious that thinking is the same. So when someone says something like "just as a simulation of fire isn't the same as an actual fire (in a very important way!), a simulation of thinking isn't the same as actual thinking" they're arguing circularly, having already accepted their conclusion that both acts necessarily require a specific physical process. Daniel Dennett called this sort of argument an "intuition pump", which relies on a misleading but intuitive analogy to get you to accept an otherwise-difficult-to-prove conclusion.

To be fair to Searle, I don't think he advanced this as an agument, but more of an illustration of his belief that thinking was indeed a physical process specific to brains.

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measurablefunc 9 hours ago | parent [-]

He explains it in the original paper¹ & says in no uncertain terms that he believes the brain is a machine & minds are implementable on machines. What he is actually arguing is that substrate independent digital computation will never be a sufficient explanation for conscious experience. He says that brains are proof that consciousness is physical & mechanical but not digital. Searle is not against the computationalist hypothesis of minds, he admits that there is nothing special about minds in terms of physical processes but he doesn't reduce everything to substrate independent digital computation & conclude that minds are just software running on brains. There are a bunch of subtle distinctions that people miss when they try to refute Searle's argument.

¹https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/482/searle.mind...

	▲	Zarathruster 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Quick definitional help for anyone who clicks on your link: the term "intentionality" in this context has a specialized meaning. In reference to mental states, it's the property of being about something, as in, "Alice is thinking about Bob." It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with intent, per se. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-intentional...

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anigbrowl 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

https://home.sandiego.edu/~baber/analytic/Lem1979.html