This question is motivated by a comment to an answer I provided to another question about John Searle and the Chinese Room Argument: What relevance, if any, does collective memory in ants have to John Searle's Chinese Room argument?
I based my answer to this question on Searle's Minds, Brains and Programs. Searle writes:
"But could something think, understand, and so on solely by virtue of being a computer with the right sort of program? Could instantiating a program, the right program of course, by itself be a sufficient condition of understanding?" This I think is the right question to ask, though it is usually confused with one or more of the earlier questions, and the answer to it is no.
I think Searle is objecting to strong artificial intelligence (AI) because it would disprove physicalism, but I might be misunderstanding him which is why I am asking the question.
With physicalism our consciousness (including understanding of language) would emerge from our bodies in some currently unknown way. Strong AI would be a way to not have consciousness emerge from our bodies, but be solely the result of a computer program.
Is Searle objecting to strong AI because if strong AI were true then that would disprove physicalism? Or is something else going on that I am missing?
Searle, J. R. (1980). Minds, brains, and programs. Behavioral and brain sciences, 3(3), 417-424.