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> The people who read the thought experiment this way don't understand it. In the thought experiment neither the computer program (no matter how powerful the co
by tigen 5y ago
> The people who read the thought experiment this way don't understand it. In the thought experiment neither the computer program (no matter how powerful the computer is) nor the man and the room understand Chinese.
Who says the computer doesn't understand Chinese, though? In this case "the computer" is the system. The program, being the code, isn't a process. The man is acting as a mechanical piece of hardware. But the computer running the program is an active process with state.
I heard a lecture by Searle on this. He mentioned the idea that "the room understands Chinese" and simply dismissed it as absurd without considering it. This is exactly the problem with his argument. Well, that and the casual conflation of the man with the computer as if the CPU hardware is the system.
- simonh 5y agoRight, exactly, it is absurd to think one man in a room with some symbols can generate understanding. But only because of scale, because we imagine a regular sized room, a normal sized book and a table with symbols on it. But it’s absurd because that system is incredibly simple, not due to any actual argument from fundamentals.