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Jack comments on With whom shall I diavlog? - Less Wrong
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John Searle on Strong AI.
Yes. I've witnessed how John Searle turns undergrad Cognitive Science majors against reductionism at UC Berkeley. Searle's "emergence" and Chinese Room argument would be very fertile topics for a diavlog.
It would be interesting to see Searle debate anyone who didn't defer to his high status and common-sense-sounding arguments and pressed him to the wall on what exactly would happen if you, say, simulated a human brain in high resolution. His intuition pumps are powerful ("thought is just like digestion, you don't really believe a computer will digest food if you simulate gastric enzymes, do you?"), but he never really presents any argument on his views of consciousness or AI, at least what I've seen.
The Chinese Room argument seems to me so deeply misguided and silly that I doubt an interesting dialog on it is possible, any more than a fruitful discussion of religion with a well-educated theist.
I know little of his work other than the aforementioned argument, but it doesn't really paint a flattering picture of his ability to engage in clear thinking.
But he has lots of fans.
Admittedly, the fact that they're fans of his strongly suggests that they're lacking in the ability to engage in clear thinking. That probably has something to do with why they never seem to grasp the arguments demonstrating the problems with the 'Chinese Room'.
Searle has problems grasping that systems can be analyzed in terms of their constituent parts, and that various parts can be put together to create a system - thus, his criticism that the Chinese Room can't be said to understand because no part of the room understands it.
Aside from being an object lesson in cognitive failure, I don't see what any discussion with him could accomplish.
IDWYC but agree that Searle's emergence seems like a pointer to confusion and reveals a really basic failure to understand reductionism.
Searle's actually pretty brilliant and he's mostly on the right side on this one. When you cast the debate as between Searle and Dennett, Dennett is obviously right. But in a broader context, Searle and Dennett are on the same side.
But I agree that there's no reason to talk about the Chinese Room. Either you're convinced by Dennett, or there's no use talking further about it.
He can probably do better than a team of Adam Frank and Jaron Lanier.
It's saying he thinks clearly enough for an EY bloggingheads conversation partner.