The Chinese Room : Mental Experiment By John Searle

Cognitive revolution provided information-processing approach as a new way of mind study. Introduction of digital computers, devices of processing information, inspired many psychologists who began to view mind in the basis of information processing. The ability of computers to process information in stages captured the attention of many cognitive psychologists. By understanding that information in a computer as it is first received by input processor, then storage in memory unit follows, and lastly processing in arithmetic unit, many cognitive psychologists experimented and applied this layout. For instance, Goldstein (2007) shows that Cherry, a psychologist, experimented on attention where he presented two different messages at a go to people and later told them to repeat the messages. He realized that people pay attention to one message among many. He also deduced that the amount of information dealt with have limits. In addition, Broadbent, also a cognitive psychologist, came up with a flow diagram that represented occurrence of events in one’s mind as attention is directed to a single environmental stimulus.

Have you ever faced a life changing experience that not only affected you, but also the society around you? Life changing experiences are turning points where someone's life changes “direction.” Some people who have been in major life changing experiences are, Melba Beals who wrote Warriors don’t cry, Jackie Robinson who wrote, I Never Had it Made and Feng Ru starring in the article “Father of Chinese Aviation” by Rebecca Maskel. Melba Pattillo Beals, Jackie Robinson and Feng Ru all faced life changing experiences that not only impacted their lives, but also their countries.

Turing, a physicalist, believed that artificial intelligence could be achieved in the future. Turing argued that the mind was merely due to the physical aspects of the brain and so a machine could one day be created that has a mind of its own, i.e. artificial intelligence. He created a test called the Turing Test to determine whether a machine has artificial intelligence. In the Turing Test, an interrogator asks two subjects a series of questions. One of the subjects is a person, the other is the computer. The goal is for the person to imitate a computer and the computer to imitate the person. If the interrogator is fooled into thinking that the computer is the human then the computer, according to Turing, is concluded to have the ability to think and thus, have a mind. Turing argued that machines passing the Turing Test were sufficient for ascribing thought.

called consciousness is the Turing test (Turing, 1950) which, rather tellingly, was originally called the

I would like to say that I chose the Tao Te Ching, however, it chose me. I was first introduced to this text one Christmas morning, many years ago, and it has been with me (in one way or another) ever since. Due to my lifestyle I was constantly losing my copy, and in my attempts to replace it I had the pleasure of owning a multitude of versions, and differing translations. Today I will be using the 1988 publication of the Tao Te Ching as translated by author Stephen Mitchell (as my primary source). One of the main reasons I chose Mitchell’s translation is because he uses “she” instead of the conventional “he” throughout his text. I found this to be refreshing and Mitchell explains this by in the forward to

Prior to Communism in China, it was known to be a chaotic country on the brink of self-destruction. With the emergence of the party leader Mao Zedong, came a new hope, which filled its inhabitants with the belief that China would return to its former historical greatness. American and Chinese relations before 1971 were in simple terms described as “uneasy”, due to the American, Soviet Cold War. It was not until President Richard Nixon visited China and realized the high value of having China as a ally that relations between the two powers began to become positive. Unknown at the time, it is assumed in the book Chinese Lessons written by John Pomfret, that the relationships he formed with the people he met in China would change his outlook on life and Communist China forever.

John Searle first proposed the argument known as The Chinese Room Argument in a book he wrote in 1984. The argument is well known if not famous and has become one of the best-know arguments in recent philosophy. Searle imagines himself locked in a room following a computer program for responding to questions written in Chinese characters slipped under the door. Searle does not understand Chinese writing, but he can follow the computer program to manipulate symbols and numerals to easily respond to the questions without fully understanding even what he was being asked or responding. The narrow conclusion of the argument is that following instructions and programming a computer might make it seem to understand Chinese but doesn’t have a real

The main conclusion is that a computer may be able to produce a language but is not able to comprehend the real understanding of that language. There have been many skeptics with different points of view about this theory, as well as supporting the argument. Searle states, “The point of the argument is this: if the man in the room does not understand Chinese on the basis of implementing the appropriate program for understanding Chinese then neither does any other digital computer solely on that basis because no computer, qua computer, has anything the man does not have.” (Cole,

In this story the main character, Louise, has to learn the alien language from square one. From there she eventually begins to realize that it is affecting how she thinks. This adds on to what was talked about in the previous paragraph, how language is altering how the brain functions. Carr references Wolf from “Is Google Making us Stupid?” and his opinion on how language has to be learnt. In this story, it demonstrates how exactly learning language can affect your mind. A quote from Maryanne Wolf included in Carr’s article is, “Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet.”(Carr) Language has the ability to physically change the composition of the brain depending on what type of language is learnt.(Carr) When Louise learns to read the new alien language, which was written in characters similar to the Chinese ideograms, her brain changed just as if she were learning Chinese. Due to these similarities between the two languages, the alien representation of language shows how language is able to change how we think, exerting control over our thoughts. The alien language therefore demonstrates, on a large scale, how language has control over the formation of new thought processes, changing the way people

The Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, collected and put into text by Chinese scholar Pu Songling, is a collection of tales of mostly alchemic, supernatural, and paranormal nature. One of the common threads that runs through the collection is that of the sexual encounters and sexual relations between people, people and creatures, and people and supernatural beings. These stories deal with the subject of sexual indulgence, and clearly connote sex as a negative and dangerous aspect of human desires. Stir-Fry, the last story in Strange Tales, however, forcefully deviates from that trend of the perception of sexual desire. In Stir-Fry, Pu glides over the topic of the dildo and treats it as if it were just any normal other object that would be ridiculous to cook and serve guests at dinner. A scholar’s sexual desires are no less strange than the tales of sex in stories such as “The Fornicating Dog,” “The Painted Skin,” “Snake Island,” and especially “Lotus Fragrance.” The sexual nature of the toy Pu ignores completely, and he enforces the idea that sexual desires or encounters are not as strange or taboo as Pu himself makes them out to be in his earlier stories in the Strange Tales collection.

In this essay I will argue that digital computers are not capable of conscious thinking. First I will use Searle's argument to defend my view. I will then explain the features of consciousness that he talks about in order to use them against counterarguments.

To explain the Chinese Room I will first explain the instructions in the Chinese room; then I will explain how the man inside the room manipulates these instructions. Finally, given that the man only operates the instructions, Searle’s conclusion is that the man does not understand Chinese. Therefore, the whole system does not understand Chinese.

The assumption is that the person is capable of understanding Chinese, simply because he can manage to assemble a set of answers to questions that would be indistiquishable from a person who speaks Chinese. The problem is that the person in the room does not understand any of the answers, but is simply following instructions. Searle utilizes a system’s ability to pass the Turing test as a parameter in the study, though the person would still indeed not understand Chinese. Searle proceeds to refute the claims of strong AI one at a time, by positioning himself as the one who manipulates the Chinese symbols. The first claim is that a system, which can pass the Turing test, understands the input and output. Searle replies that as the "computer" in the Chinese room, he gains no understanding of Chinese by simply manipulating the symbols according to the formal program, in this case being the complex rules. (Searle, 1980) It was not necessary for the operator to have any understanding of what the interviewer is asking, or the replies that produced. He may not even know that there is a question and answer session going on outside the room.

Through this piece of evidence it is established that even though the machines argue logically they cannot argue properly without warming up their brain plates. Their brain plates are not perfect though they call themselves superior to man. Though they are intelligent they will always be dependent on human intelligence because the humans are the ones that created them.

In his paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Alan Turing sets out to answer the question of whether machines can think in the same humans can by conceptualizing the question in concrete terms. In simple terms, Turing redefines the question by posing whether a machine can replicate the cognition of a human being. Yet, some may object to the notion that Turing’s new question effectively captures the nature of machines’ capacity for thought or consciousness, such as John Searle. In his Chinese room thought experiment, Searle outlines a scenario that implies machines’ apparent replication of human cognition does not yield conscious understanding. While Searle’s Chinese thought experiment demonstrates how a Turing test is not sufficient to establish that a machine can possess consciousness or thought, this argument does not prove that machines are absolutely incapable of consciousness or thought. Rather, given the ongoing uncertainty of the debate regarding the intelligence of machines, there can be no means to confirm or disconfirm the conscious experience of machines as well as the consciousness of humans by extension of that principle.