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John Searle's Chinese Room Argument

Decent Essays

In Reason and Responsibility, John Searle presents his Chinese room argument to refute Strong AI, or artificial intelligence. Strong AI is an idea that a computer is as genuine and accurate by virtue of those who programmed it, not a simple tool. Essentially, a system that has a mental state, M, and follows a set of programmed rules as if it behaves as M. Searle wishes to prove that a mechanical application of communication rules to a system does not give the machine the ability to understand the language, hence, can’t think for itself. In other words, Searle is saying that computers cannot think. Searle’s argument is as follows: Premise 1 states that programs are syntactical processes. Premise 2 states that minds have mental/semantic contents. …show more content…

The man in the room is essentially the computer, and since the man doesn’t understand Chinese, neither does the computer. However, the argument allows for the man/computer to use a set of books to try to translate the messages and to give a reply. Although the man alone does not understand Chinese, the man is able to use these books that allow him to make Chinese symbols using certain rules. Thus, the combination of the man and the books allows for the conclusion that the room does indeed know Chinese. The man, X, understands English. The books, Y, are a set of tools that allow translation between English and Chinese. Therefore, X+Y understand …show more content…

My computer is considered a very nice gaming computer. My CPU, which is an Intel i7-3770k, is one of the highest quality processors available in the market at the moment. It is capable of running almost all the games available in the current market. Sometimes I play very demanding games that require all that CPU power. But as in any game, the processing procedure is always the same, it processes the information that goes through it to display to my screen. It doesn’t actually know what that information is, only I, the gamer, understand what the game is because the game itself is the software. The CPU only processes the software; it doesn’t understand it. Similar to saying how the human brain is incapable of flawlessly making the translation of Chinese or Chinese simulation can be applied to computer CPUs as well. Had I been using a 3 year old computer CPU instead of my current one, and decided to play a newly released game that required a large amount of processing power, my computer would struggle tremendously to the point where I don’t think it would be possible to run the game/software. The CPU lacks the required power to continue the task; similarly to the man lacking the tools will not allow him to successfully simulate a Chinese speaker.

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