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For what it's worth, Daniel Dennett spends considerable time in _Consciousness Explained_ (and his other books) deconstructing both why Searle's Chinese Room ar
by bnjmn 9y ago
For what it's worth, Daniel Dennett spends considerable time in _Consciousness Explained_ (and his other books) deconstructing both why Searle's Chinese Room argument is misleading, and also why is seems intuitively appealing (he calls it an "intuition pump"). I suspect you would find Dennett's treatment of Searle very much aligned with your skepticism!
- darkmighty 9y agoCould you perhaps summarize Dennett's counter argument to Chinese Room?
- sethev 9y agoI'd say Dennett's claim is that Chinese Room isn't an argument at all. The reason it has a guy in the room is because we're used to people understanding language. It applies just as well to components of the brain, like neurons (as currently understood - i.e. primarily mechanistic). There's no "guy" sitting in your brain who understands English. In fact I think a lot of people miss that Searle's core claim is that there's something fundamental about consciousness in the same way that there's something fundamental about the foundations of physics. Searle is arguing against the idea that neurons, individually or collectively, can be conscious.
- ThomPete 9y agoThe entire house understands Chinese note the person in it, just like your individual neurons don't understand Chinese either. Don't know what Dennets counter is but it's probably pretty close to that.
- draw_down 9y agoSearle explicitly addresses this point in his original argument for the Chinese room. Something I’ve found rather convincing about the Chinese room is that he predicted many of the counterarguments ahead of time and addressed them, but people still present them as if he hadn’t thought of them.