Ford’s Helen Keller Was Never in a Chinese Room claims that my argument in How Helen Keller Used Syntactic Semantics to Escape from a Chinese Room fails because Searle and I use the terms ‘syntax’ and ‘semantics’ differently, hence are at cross purposes. Ford has misunderstood me; this reply clarifies my theory.

The proper treatment of computationalism, as the thesis that cognition is computable, is presented and defended. Some arguments of James H. Fetzer against computationalism are examined and found wanting, and his positive theory of minds as semiotic systems is shown to be consistent with computationalism. An objection is raised to an argument of Selmer Bringsjord against one strand of computationalism, namely, that Turing-Test± passing artifacts are persons, it is argued that, whether or not this objection holds, such artifacts will inevitably (...) be persons. (shrink)