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The entire argument is flawed, as it doesn't actually prove anything at all. Here is the full argument, with all assumptions explicit: Assume properties 'consc

The entire argument is flawed, as it doesn't actually prove anything at all. Here is the full argument, with all assumptions explicit: Assume properties 'consciousness' and 'intelligence' exist. I'm not going to define them because I can't. Assume that a human has these properties. Now I demonstrate that a machine can't have these properties, since they were never actually defined. Since by assumption a human has them, a human has intelligence and a machine not. The type of ideas that can lead to this reasoning are the same of the people who rejected evolution as thinking that man could never have descended from monkeys. The only think the argument proves is the close-mindedness of its author.

lottin 8y ago
> Assume properties 'consciousness' and 'intelligence' exist. I'm not going to define them because I can't. Assume that a human has these properties. But this is not what the argument says, is it? The argument says imagine a man that can't understand Chinese. The assumption here is that some humans can understand Chinese while others can not.
- svalorzen 8y ago
  It is, because the term 'understanding' is not defined in a useful manner. What does it mean to understand something? If you can ever define it, I can bet I can make a machine satisfy your definition. What the argument does here is to simply avoid the definition, so that it cannot be disproved.
  - hackeraccount 8y ago
    I take the Chinese Room to be a reaction to the Turing Test. The Turing Test also avoids defining understanding but it seems to say that we don't need a definition of understanding - if something appears to understand then it does in fact understand. The Chinese Room attempts to refute that idea by saying that you can get the effect of understanding with a methodology that obviously lacks the gestalt that we associate with understanding a subject. Personally I'm a sketptic of hard A.I. in general. Conscious to me seems like a magic trick - in that the only magical thing about it is that it will disappear once you know how it's done. Which makes it seem like a black box that can only be created if you don't know how or what you're doing.

lottin 8y ago

> Assume properties 'consciousness' and 'intelligence' exist. I'm not going to define them because I can't. Assume that a human has these properties. But this is not what the argument says, is it? The argument says imagine a man that can't understand Chinese. The assumption here is that some humans can understand Chinese while others can not.

svalorzen 8y ago
It is, because the term 'understanding' is not defined in a useful manner. What does it mean to understand something? If you can ever define it, I can bet I can make a machine satisfy your definition. What the argument does here is to simply avoid the definition, so that it cannot be disproved.
- hackeraccount 8y ago
  I take the Chinese Room to be a reaction to the Turing Test. The Turing Test also avoids defining understanding but it seems to say that we don't need a definition of understanding - if something appears to understand then it does in fact understand. The Chinese Room attempts to refute that idea by saying that you can get the effect of understanding with a methodology that obviously lacks the gestalt that we associate with understanding a subject. Personally I'm a sketptic of hard A.I. in general. Conscious to me seems like a magic trick - in that the only magical thing about it is that it will disappear once you know how it's done. Which makes it seem like a black box that can only be created if you don't know how or what you're doing.