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What is missing is the man's ability to memorize the function and carry it out without the book. If he could, and the function truly produced a normal response

What is missing is the man's ability to memorize the function and carry it out without the book. If he could, and the function truly produced a normal response to any Chinese phrase in existence, then he would speak Chinese. Edit: He would speak Chinese, but he wouldn't understand it. What is missing in order to understand Chinese is an additional program that translates Chinese to English or pictures or some abstract structure independent of language. Humans have this, but the function in this thought experiment is a black box, so we don't know if it uses an intermediate representation. Thanks to colinmhayes for pointing this out. Could he give a reasoned answer to "what is the weather"? That depends on whether we include external stimuli as part of the function input. If not, then neither a human nor a computer could give a sensible answer beyond "I don't know". I see now that your issue is really with the function - could a function ever exist that gives responses based on history/environment/experience. My understanding is that such a function is the premise of the thought experiment; it's a hypothetical we accept in order to have this discussion. Searle claims that even if such a function exists, the computer still doesn't truly understand. But if that's what we're asking, my answer would be yes, as long as history/environment/experience are inputs as well. Of course a computer locked away in a room only receiving questions as input can never give a real answer to "what is the weather", just like a human in that situation couldn't. But if we expand our Chinese Room test to include that type of question and also allow the room or computer to take its environment as input, then it can give answers caused by its environment. > You actually need to show it can be so-implemented. No one has done this. I mean, fair enough. It's fine to say "I won't believe it until I see it", but that pretty much ends the discussion. If we want to talk about whether something not yet achieved is possible, then we need to be willing to imagine things that don't exist yet.

colinmhayes 5y ago
> If he could, and the function truly produced a normal response to any Chinese phrase in existence, then he would speak Chinese I don't necessarily disagree, but it's not so simple. Just because the man speaks chinese doesn't mean he understands it. He could have figured out the proper output for every possible input without knowing what any of it means. If the next person asks in English "what did you talk about with the last person?" what would he answer, assuming he also speaks english? Really the question comes down to if the computer is able to write the book by observing I guess, but even then you could conceive of a different book with instructions on how to write the translation book.
- burkaman 5y ago
  You're right, I will edit my comment. Thanks for this framing.
- quinnjh 5y ago
  One of you said a few comments up: "then the question arises: what is missing?" And i just wanna pour us all a cup of tea and sit with that. It reminds me of the song "anything you can do, i can do better, i can do anything better than you - No you cant! Yes i can!.." The issue is- tell me what it cant do. Explain to me what the chinese room is not understanding. Whatever model you use to translate the missing functions can then be "encoded". Id like to think my cpu has a brain and it goes off dreaming with the idle threads- but im also quite convinced that every single thread that runs machine code is a non-concious direct representation of the mental model i encoded into its functions.
wizzwizz4 5y ago
> What is missing is the man's ability to memorize the function and carry it out without the book. If he could, and the function truly produced a normal response to any Chinese phrase in existence, then he would speak Chinese. No, the function would. My CPU doesn't speak HTML. My web browser does. Does running my web browser mean the CPU speaks HTML, even if the whole browser is loaded into cache? I don't think it does; the CPU is still running machine code. If I memorise a Turing machine, does that mean I understand the computation it's performing? No; I'd have to pick it apart and work out what each bit does, then put that meaning back together, in order to try to work out how it works. Memorising the function would enable the man to teach himself Chinese (whichever language “Chinese” is), just like memorising a good mathematics would allow most people to teach themselves the concepts therein. But memorisation isn't understanding.
- burkaman 5y ago
  You're right, I updated my comment earlier to address this. Speaking is not the same as understanding.

colinmhayes 5y ago

> If he could, and the function truly produced a normal response to any Chinese phrase in existence, then he would speak Chinese I don't necessarily disagree, but it's not so simple. Just because the man speaks chinese doesn't mean he understands it. He could have figured out the proper output for every possible input without knowing what any of it means. If the next person asks in English "what did you talk about with the last person?" what would he answer, assuming he also speaks english? Really the question comes down to if the computer is able to write the book by observing I guess, but even then you could conceive of a different book with instructions on how to write the translation book.

burkaman 5y ago
You're right, I will edit my comment. Thanks for this framing.
quinnjh 5y ago
One of you said a few comments up: "then the question arises: what is missing?" And i just wanna pour us all a cup of tea and sit with that. It reminds me of the song "anything you can do, i can do better, i can do anything better than you - No you cant! Yes i can!.." The issue is- tell me what it cant do. Explain to me what the chinese room is not understanding. Whatever model you use to translate the missing functions can then be "encoded". Id like to think my cpu has a brain and it goes off dreaming with the idle threads- but im also quite convinced that every single thread that runs machine code is a non-concious direct representation of the mental model i encoded into its functions.

wizzwizz4 5y ago

> What is missing is the man's ability to memorize the function and carry it out without the book. If he could, and the function truly produced a normal response to any Chinese phrase in existence, then he would speak Chinese. No, the function would. My CPU doesn't speak HTML. My web browser does. Does running my web browser mean the CPU speaks HTML, even if the whole browser is loaded into cache? I don't think it does; the CPU is still running machine code. If I memorise a Turing machine, does that mean I understand the computation it's performing? No; I'd have to pick it apart and work out what each bit does, then put that meaning back together, in order to try to work out how it works. Memorising the function would enable the man to teach himself Chinese (whichever language “Chinese” is), just like memorising a good mathematics would allow most people to teach themselves the concepts therein. But memorisation isn't understanding.

burkaman 5y ago
You're right, I updated my comment earlier to address this. Speaking is not the same as understanding.