Talk:Chinese room

can someone please explain, in HS english, why this isn't total nonsense?

so searle doesn't understand chinese, but the program does; what is the big deal ? that is like saying you can't do sign language cause your hands don't understand ASL I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be rude, but this seems like a total waste of time; I must be missing something — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.245.17.105 (talk) 22:12, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm afraid that you're not going to get a satisfying reply, because there isn't one. I don't remember who it was exactly, but I remember one philosopher saying that the Chinese room argument is so profoundly and intricately stupid, that the whole field of philosophy of mind was reorganized around explaining why it's so completely wrong. In my experience, most philosophers think this argument is really terrible, but there can be value in articulating why. Other than that, yeah, Searle is mostly wasting everyone's time. Also "Chinese" isn't a language, but that's beside the point.--ScreamingRobot (talk) 07:19, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

I agree with your main point, but I'd say that Chinese actually is a language. The word refers to Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin, or, rarely, Standard Mandarin. The word "Chinese" sometimes is used to mean a particular group of languages associated with China, but it's going too far to say "Chinese is not a language". Polar Apposite (talk) 17:37, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Plenty of experts consider it to be weak, giving a similar argument. Our own brain consists of "parts using parts", so to speak. I'm actually surprised how little this is represented in this article. I study Artificial Intelligence and you'd think it was already disproved after hearing all the counter-arguments. Wikipedia seems pretty out of date here. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 17:59, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, there is not even a criticism section in the article. Searching the article for "criticism" reveals a "further reading" section, where there are some links to works containing criticism of the Chinese Room thought experiment. None of the criticism linked to is in the article. Surely it should be? Polar Apposite (talk) 17:41, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

There used to be a criticism section but it was removed. Look at older versions for revisions by user "likebox". SilverCity1 (talk) 05:12, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

I looked at some lists of old revisions and used ctrl + f to search them for "likebox" without quotes and I couldn't find them? Is there a better way to search for "likebox"? How old approximately are the versions that you are referring to? Polar Apposite (talk) 15:47, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chinese_room&oldid=161355774 SilverCity1 (talk) 21:35, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Although the "Critisms" section nailed it, it could have done with a bit of NPV and/or a citation or two. As it is, it looks more suitable to be a talk page comment, and even then would look too much like discussion of the topic rather than discussion of the article. I'm not surprised it was removed. But it should have been improved, not removed completely. This is really weird. Is Searle some kind of sacred cow? If so, why? Polar Apposite (talk) 13:13, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

I think the issue comes from the use of "understand". Take the statement "Searle can't translate words from chinese to English but the program can". As opposed to "Searle can understand the poem is beautiful but a program can't". If the poem is in chinese then English-only speakers can't really do anything with it. But, if you know chinese then you can understand what is being communicated in the poem and realize that it's beautiful. The thought exercise was initially proposed as a means of separating the syntax of words from the thought processes those words convey. Does that help? Padillah (talk) 15:06, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Smart computer scientists will tell you the argument is irrelevant to artificial intelligence.This is not the same as saying that it has been refuted. Searle would agree that this argument doesn't try to put any limits on how intelligent or human-like machines will be in the future.

Contrary to the post above, philosophers take the argument very seriously, because it is an illustration of the hard problem of consciousness, which may the single most important problem in philosophy today. See also Mary's room for another illustration.

Re "parts using parts": the question at issue is how could a program create consciousness? What is it about the "whole" that might make it different than the parts? There is no easy answer to this, and as long as there isn't, the argument remains unrefuted. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 05:50, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Which philosophers take the argument very seriously? Polar Apposite (talk) 17:51, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

If the Room says it thinks the poem is beautiful and can explain why in an impressive way while passing the Turing test then what does it even mean to say the Room doesn't understand the poem, including the beauty of the poem. Yes, inside the Room we can see that's a man, who doesn't understand a word of Chinese, with a rule book moving cards around, but if we look inside the head of a Chinese poetry lover, we see a bunch of molecules obeying the laws of physics. Polar Apposite (talk) 17:49, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

These are my thoughts on the matter. I think the main question is about consciousness, i.e "is the system conscious"? Now "consciousness" is not well defined and can only be understood in the intuitive sense. Is there a reason to think that a system composed of cards, a man dealing them, the rule book etc. is consciously understanding Chinese, while the parts of the system don't? Even if you apply it to directly to computers, we know computers are nothing more than high-voltage, low-voltage signaling machines - everything else one might say about computation is just interpretation. And this could be replaced by anything which were able to reliably represent two distinct values (I figure instead of electricity you could use another type of energy). Is there a reason to think this sequence of two distinct values might, as a system, become conscious?

The only thing we intuitively know is conscious, is us human beings, and for a variety of reasons we infer that this consciousness emerges from and depends on the brain. Or, you might say, the brain is conscious. Now the brain is also a heap of cells, and we can agree this heap of cells somehow becomes conscious. Seeing as this is the only conscious entity we are really sure of, it would be the safest to infer that another entity is conscious only if it contains the same causal mechanism that the brain has to create consciousness. So, It would be intellectually honest to say, that a computer (however implemented) is conscious, only if fulfills the requirement stated above. The problem is (it seems) no one knows what are those causal mechanisms. This question I think might only be answered by advances in the field of neuroscience, if it turns out that the mechanism which creates consciousness is computational, i.e that the part of the brain which creates consciousness is a computer.

Until this happens I see no honest reason to assume that computers are conscious.

So you think that the safest is the only intellectually honest thing one can argue? --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 09:00, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

We don't actually know that we are conscious, from our intuitive, subjective impressions. We can define any talking, living, human as conscious, provides he makes sense, but that's all. We believe we are. Or we are sure we are. We can't prove that we are, and so we cannot, as scientists, say that we know we are. Likewise we could define consciousness as something only humans have, or even something only nonhumans have, but that is obviously arbitrary and sheds no light on the question. You are doing likewise when you 'infer' that only brains or machines that work the same way as the human brain are conscious. It is equally arbitrary and circular.

We haven't got a clear definition of consciousness, only of a claim that something/someone makes about itself/himself that it/he is conscious.

If it acts conscious, then the burden is on you to say why it is not conscious, and not vice versa. You need to show why it is disqualified despite having jumped through all the hoops by passing the Turing test. You need some rule that you can use to supplement the Turing test. But if it's arbitrary, it proves nothing.

Let me repeat, my subjective impression of being conscious, or even of the sensation of the color red, is not proof that I really have that sensation. It is a belief, even if I believe it utterly. So is my belief that I can intuitively, directly experience my own consciousness, while other people's consciousness is something I have less reason to believe in, even if they say they are conscious just as eloquently as I do.

You are not using an *operational definition* of consciousness. Polar Apposite (talk) 18:18, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that computers (or computer programs) are not conscious, so Searle's argument holds. At the very least, there is no reason to assume that they are.

On a different note, I think the root cause of this problem is actually the subjectivity vs. objectivity problem, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion .. Dannyfonk (talk) 09:18, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

It's more of an assertion than an argument at this point. If you and others hold the unfalsifiable opinion that computers can't be "conscious", that's fine, but the Chinese Room scenario is so poorly constructed and interpreted that it's baffling to me that an adult with a PhD was able to pass it off as academic work. One day the page intro will point this out, but for now we have to take this garbage seriously. Let me be clear: As an opinion, the idea is fine (albeit unoriginal) and I would entertain the idea as part of my own personal philosophy; as academic work published in a journal, it is garbage by modern standards.

I am a physicist by trade, so I 2001:480:91:FF00:0:0:0:15 (talk) 17:04, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

The quality of the argument isn't really all that relevant to how it should be treated. It is influential and notable. I'm not certain I have ever met anyone who had a high opinion of the argument or Searle, but I've certainly heard a lot of people talk about it a lot, and the body of published work discussing it speaks for itself.

The notability is really the only relevant factor, but as an aside I would add that there can be a lot of value in a simple, well-expressed presentation of a bad argument. It can make explicit a bad but intuitive idea that others are merely hand waving at, and thus make it easier to refute. See, for example, What Mary Didn't Know. Ncsaint (talk) 12:34, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

The notability of an argument depends to a large extent on the quality of the argument, I would have thought. Polar Apposite (talk) 15:40, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I’m a philosopher. It’s not garbage, it’s a good argument. Philosophy being a discipline dealing with the basics, sometimes basicness is confounded for silliness. --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 16:56, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Paragraph in the wrong place?

This paragraph: "Searle argues that his critics are also relying on intuitions, however his opponents' intuitions have no empirical basis. He writes that, in order to consider the "system reply" as remotely plausible, a person must be "under the grip of an ideology". The system reply only makes sense (to Searle) if one assumes that any "system" can have consciousness, just by virtue of being a system with the right behavior and functional parts. This assumption, he argues, is not tenable given our experience of consciousness." seems to be out of place in the Churchland Luminous Room argument section. Does it belong elsewhere, or does it need to edited to make it refer specifically to Churchland? Polar Apposite (talk) 08:45, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Churchland's luminous room is not supposed to be a section header, it's just a boldface name of the argument given in that one paragraph, which is a weird layout, used throughout the article.

The final two paragraphs are both in reply to any of the arguments in this section (that is, arguments that say Searle's argument depends only on people's intuitions).

We should probably remove all those "boldface argument name" things and just introduce the name of the argument in the first sentence of each paragraph. ---- CharlesTGillingham (talk) 00:24, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed the "boldface argument name / indented description" form in a few sections, but looking at it again, I'm not sure if my edits are an improvement. Does anyone have an opinion?

The structure of each section is this:

• introduction to this kind of reply
• three or four replies of this form
• summary with Searle's counterargument against any reply of this form.

Right now, some of the sections use the old format (where each argument gets it's own header, and is indented, so that the un-indent indicates that we're now talking about all these arguments) and some of them are just flat. Which is better? ---- CharlesTGillingham (talk) 01:11, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Okay, I have given all the replies and a consistent format. It might not be the best, but at least it highlights the structure of the dialog. --- CharlesTGillingham (talk) 17:06, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Brains Cause Minds

The exact phrase "Brains cause minds" is in fact from Searle's Scientific American article. There it is called "Axiom 4". MJNykaenen (talk) 15:00, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

 Fixed ---- CharlesTGillingham (talk) 06:28, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Help with formatting references

I added a section to the article and I have a problem with formatting the references in the way that they are used in this article. Can someone help? Vegan416 (talk) 11:49, 8 November 2024 (UTC)