Minds, brains, and programs (1980) [pdf] (home.csulb.edu)

John Searle’s 1980 paper “Minds, Brains, and Programs” mounts a concise philosophical attack on “strong AI” — the claim that the right computer program literally has mental states. Searle distinguishes this from “weak AI” (computers as tools for studying minds) and introduces the Chinese Room thought experiment: a person who does not understand Chinese follows syntactic rules to manipulate symbols and produces outputs indistinguishable from a native speaker’s, yet has no understanding. From this he argues that instantiating a program is neither necessary nor sufficient for intentionality (the aboutness of mental states) because symbol manipulation is purely syntactic while understanding is semantic and depends on causal powers of the brain. Technically, Searle’s core claims are (1) intentionality in humans arises from causal features of brains, and (2) running a program alone cannot produce intentionality. The logical consequence is that explaining minds requires mechanisms with causal powers equivalent to brains — mere software won’t do. The paper forced AI/ML and cognitive science to reckon with the difference between computation and semantics, steering debates toward embodiment, neurobiological implementation, and whether replicating brain-like causal dynamics (not just algorithms) is required for true understanding.