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I honestly don't understand how that's a rebuttal of the Chinese room. Obviously a person with such a fantastic device would not "understand Chinese" if they ha

by rvense 6y ago

I honestly don't understand how that's a rebuttal of the Chinese room. Obviously a person with such a fantastic device would not "understand Chinese" if they had it.

dragonwriter 6y ago
The Chinese Room is an argument that a Turing-like test is inadequate to prove understanding of a language because a combination of two things, neither of which have understanding, could conceivably pass it for every test scenario. The fact that one of those two things is impossible (or, alternatively, is equivalent to a device encoding a full understanding of the language) negates the argument.
- rvense 6y ago
  I see your point. It's been a very long time since I've read the original text, but I don't remember this being my impression of the argument being made, and that would indeed be a very simplistic one. But I might be mixing it up with some of the debates on semantics within linguistics, which is of course a slightly different topic.
yongjik 6y ago
Consider a more realistic version of Chinese room. Bob gets a slip of paper, with written Chinese on it, and slips it into a black-box "Chinese room", which produces another paper with a perfectly written Chinese answer. Bob hands it back - it is pretty obvious that Bob doesn't need to have an inkling of Chinese. Except, in this version, there's an actual Chinese speaker, Xin, sitting inside the room. It's clear that it's Xin, not Bob, who understands Chinese. Now let's move back to the original Chinese room argument. It's clear that it's the room that understands Chinese - or, rather, the whole system composed of the rules (the room) and its executor (the person), but not the executor by itself. It only seems absurd because our real-life experiences make us presume that, when there's a room and a person, the person must be the more sentient part. IMHO the whole argument is a philosophical sleight of hand.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  This is the correct answer. However, when confronted with this "the system does understand" argument, I believe that Searle and his defenders fall back on the lack-of-qualia position. That is, there is no entity that would experience anything, and that therefore the ability to demonstrate "understanding" as the room does isn't a sufficient (or perhaps even necessary) condition of consciousness. This point is trickier to rebut, because I think it's fair to acknowledge that our ability to imagine where there would be qualia in the case of the chinese room is more than a little limited. I think the only fair answers are either: 1. our imagination is too limited, but that doesn't allow us to conclude that there cannot be qualia 2. there are indeed no qualia associated with the Chinese Room, because consciousness is not required for full language processing. (or both)
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    The problem with the lack of qualia argument is that qualia has no operationalizable, testable definition; it's something we have a fuzzy idea of based on individual experience and attribute to other entities based on similarity of behavior, but can't really with any authority say does or does not exist in anything (other than that an entity itself that experiences qualia can attribute it to themselves.)
  - sjy 6y ago
    I’ve not heard this argument before. Isn’t saying “there is no entity that would experience anything” begging the question? If the system is capable of understanding, why wouldn’t it also be capable of experience? That is what we see in animals.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      No, this is the very heart of Searle's thought experiment. His point was that you could imagine a rule-based system for language translation and conversation that clearly was not conscious. The argument wasn't about whether or not it was possible to build such a system, but about whether or not such a system must necessarily be conscious. Searle's claim was that it was clear from his thought experiment that such a system could exist without any understanding, and definitely without consciousness. Others have disagreed with his reasoning and his conclusion.
ivalm 6y ago
But the room as a whole WOULD understand chinese. The person in the story is the mouth, not the brain, the look up book/device is the brain.
- rvense 6y ago
  If such a device could exist, it would be the part which understood. If the questions were about facts and the person looked up the facts in a book, it wouldn't be the room as a whole that knew the facts. The room as a whole delivers facts, but there's a fairly obvious separation of responsibilities in the implementation...
  - ivalm 6y ago
    > The room as a whole delivers facts, but there's a fairly obvious separation of responsibilities in the implementation... Sure, but I think that's always the case. When you speak your entire body (at least head/neck/chest, but also cardiovascular system) are involved in "delivering" information but your tongue (and for that matter most organs involved) doesn't "know" the information. We still say that "you" as a person know something. When a computer displays a result of some (cpu) calculation on the monitor, the gpu making electrical signals for the input of the monitor has no meaningful knowledge about the calculation, etc, but we still say "the computer" made the calculation.

by rvense 6y ago

I honestly don't understand how that's a rebuttal of the Chinese room. Obviously a person with such a fantastic device would not "understand Chinese" if they had it.

dragonwriter 6y ago

The Chinese Room is an argument that a Turing-like test is inadequate to prove understanding of a language because a combination of two things, neither of which have understanding, could conceivably pass it for every test scenario. The fact that one of those two things is impossible (or, alternatively, is equivalent to a device encoding a full understanding of the language) negates the argument.

rvense 6y ago
I see your point. It's been a very long time since I've read the original text, but I don't remember this being my impression of the argument being made, and that would indeed be a very simplistic one. But I might be mixing it up with some of the debates on semantics within linguistics, which is of course a slightly different topic.

yongjik 6y ago

Consider a more realistic version of Chinese room. Bob gets a slip of paper, with written Chinese on it, and slips it into a black-box "Chinese room", which produces another paper with a perfectly written Chinese answer. Bob hands it back - it is pretty obvious that Bob doesn't need to have an inkling of Chinese. Except, in this version, there's an actual Chinese speaker, Xin, sitting inside the room. It's clear that it's Xin, not Bob, who understands Chinese. Now let's move back to the original Chinese room argument. It's clear that it's the room that understands Chinese - or, rather, the whole system composed of the rules (the room) and its executor (the person), but not the executor by itself. It only seems absurd because our real-life experiences make us presume that, when there's a room and a person, the person must be the more sentient part. IMHO the whole argument is a philosophical sleight of hand.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
This is the correct answer. However, when confronted with this "the system does understand" argument, I believe that Searle and his defenders fall back on the lack-of-qualia position. That is, there is no entity that would experience anything, and that therefore the ability to demonstrate "understanding" as the room does isn't a sufficient (or perhaps even necessary) condition of consciousness. This point is trickier to rebut, because I think it's fair to acknowledge that our ability to imagine where there would be qualia in the case of the chinese room is more than a little limited. I think the only fair answers are either: 1. our imagination is too limited, but that doesn't allow us to conclude that there cannot be qualia 2. there are indeed no qualia associated with the Chinese Room, because consciousness is not required for full language processing. (or both)
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  The problem with the lack of qualia argument is that qualia has no operationalizable, testable definition; it's something we have a fuzzy idea of based on individual experience and attribute to other entities based on similarity of behavior, but can't really with any authority say does or does not exist in anything (other than that an entity itself that experiences qualia can attribute it to themselves.)
- sjy 6y ago
  I’ve not heard this argument before. Isn’t saying “there is no entity that would experience anything” begging the question? If the system is capable of understanding, why wouldn’t it also be capable of experience? That is what we see in animals.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    No, this is the very heart of Searle's thought experiment. His point was that you could imagine a rule-based system for language translation and conversation that clearly was not conscious. The argument wasn't about whether or not it was possible to build such a system, but about whether or not such a system must necessarily be conscious. Searle's claim was that it was clear from his thought experiment that such a system could exist without any understanding, and definitely without consciousness. Others have disagreed with his reasoning and his conclusion.

ivalm 6y ago

But the room as a whole WOULD understand chinese. The person in the story is the mouth, not the brain, the look up book/device is the brain.

rvense 6y ago
If such a device could exist, it would be the part which understood. If the questions were about facts and the person looked up the facts in a book, it wouldn't be the room as a whole that knew the facts. The room as a whole delivers facts, but there's a fairly obvious separation of responsibilities in the implementation...
- ivalm 6y ago
  > The room as a whole delivers facts, but there's a fairly obvious separation of responsibilities in the implementation... Sure, but I think that's always the case. When you speak your entire body (at least head/neck/chest, but also cardiovascular system) are involved in "delivering" information but your tongue (and for that matter most organs involved) doesn't "know" the information. We still say that "you" as a person know something. When a computer displays a result of some (cpu) calculation on the monitor, the gpu making electrical signals for the input of the monitor has no meaningful knowledge about the calculation, etc, but we still say "the computer" made the calculation.