This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures.

This lecture in the series Minds, Brains and Science, given by John Searle, was originally

broadcast in 1984.

In my last lecture, I provided at least the outlines of a solution to the so-called

mind-body problem.

Mental processes are caused by the behavior of elements of the brain.

At the same time, they are realized in the structure that's made up of those elements.

Now, I think this answer is consistent with standard biological approaches to the biological phenomena.

However, it's very much a minority point of view. The prevailing view in philosophy,

psychology, and artificial intelligence is one which emphasizes the analogies between the

functioning of the human brain and the functioning of digital computers. According to the most

extreme version of this view, the brain is just a digital computer and the mind is just a computer program.

One might summarize this view, I call it strong artificial intelligence or strong AI,

by saying that the mind is to the brain as the program is to the computer hardware.

This view has the consequence that there's nothing essentially biological about the human mind.

The brain just happens to be one of an indefinitely large number of different kinds of

hardware computers that could sustain the programs which make up human intelligence.

On this view, any physical system whatever

that had the right program with the right inputs and outputs would have a mind in exactly

the same sense that you and I have minds. So, for example, if you made a computer out of old

beer cans powered by windmills, if it had the right program, it would have to have a mind.

And the point is not that for all we know it might have thoughts and feelings,

...