I gave up on Searle summarily after reading Freedom and Neurobiology, which is a dismal piece of cynicism that essentially boils down to, "If we stimulate a neuron in culture it behaves predictably. Therefore, you have no free will, and your agency is illusory." I just said in two sentences what he goes on for volumes about. It's not a philosophy I find inspiring, although I'm sure if I dug deeper into his writings I might find something worthwhile. As for the connectome, here's what I think about that in a nutshell. If we want to understand sociology, we don't do it by drawing a detailed map of where everyone lives and which way all the roads go. Why? Because a society is far more than the sum of where everyone goes and at what speed they travel. The connectome is trying to answer the question of how by simply describing what the brain look like. It's a fools errand if ever there was one.
WOAH, really? I was only familiar with the Chinese Room argument and some criticisms he had about AI, but I had totally not heard that reductionist nonsense. My co-worker had him at UC for philosophy of mind and had recommended him for that in particular. I am in agreement with your sentiments on the whole connectome thing, but it's only as useless as the claims it tries to make. I'm sure it can have some utility (I honestly can't imagine for what other than just doing it), but nothing seems obvious. As per Searle, he has arguments about mentation and intentionality that I think are appropriate in the debate on consciouness, I'm not an expert by any means, I'm personally trying to fill in the gaps my very materialist education left me with, and some of his stuff seems pretty sound