Searle S Chinese Room Argument

He calls his argument the chinese room argument note.

Searle s chinese room argument.

Searle actually believes that his argument works against non classical computers as well but it is best to start with the digital computers with which we are all most familiar the chinese room. Internally a computer uses its given program rules to syntactically manipulate its symbols purely formally by their shapes alone. Philosopher john searle formulated the chinese room argument to discredit the idea that a computer can be programmed with the appropriate functions to behave the same way a human mind would. The word understand has been unduly stretched in the case of the chinese room 175.

In response to searle s well known chinese room argument against strong ai and more generally computationalism harnad proposed that if the symbols manipulated by a robot were sufficiently. Chinese room argument 1980. It is one of the best known and widely credited counters to claims of artificial intelligence ai that is to claims that computers do or at least can someday might think. A man is in a room with a book of rules.

According to searle s original presentation the argument is based on two key claims. Gardiner addresses the chinese room argument in his book the mind s new science 1985 171 177. Searle asks you to imagine the following scenario. Gardiner considers all the standard replies to the chinese room argument and concludes that searle is correct about the room.

Philosopher john searle s famous chinese room argument cra contends that regardless of a computer s observable inputs and outputs no type of program could by itself enable a computer to think internally like a human. The reason is as follows. Searle confuses the mental qualities of one computational process himself for example with those of another process that the first process might be interpreting a process that understands chinese for example. There is a room.

The chinese room argument was introduced in searle s 1980 paper minds brains and programs published in behavioral and brain sciences. Here s the argument in more detail. The chinese room argument is a thought experiment of john searle 1980a and associated 1984 derivation.