Can syntax account for meaning? Paul Churchland's computationalism versus John Searle's 'Chinese Room' thought experimen

Paul Churchland maintains that the totality of our mental lives can be explained through a computational approach to cognition, i.e. an approach maintaining intelligence to be grounded in the manipulation of patterns of information bearing symbols. What this approach has difficulty in explaining, however, is the intentional nature of many of our mental states. This problem for computationalism is illustrated quite succinctly in John Searle's "Chinese Room" thought experiment. But before Churchland addresses Searle's "Chinese Room," he makes the claim that intentionality proves to be of little importance once the true hallmark of the mental is recognized, i.e. the structural similarities that exist between folk psychology and explanations in the natural sciences.;In the critical part of this thesis, I shall analyze Churchland's efforts to (1) discredit intentionality in lieu of these alleged structural similarities to physics, and (2) illustrate an alleged question begging nature of the "Chinese Room" with his own thought experiment. And after analysis of both prongs of Churchland's defense of computationalism, I shall make a stand in regards to what I believe would be the wisest stand to make given analysis of all sides of the issue in question.