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Of all the things I studied at Berkeley, the Philosophy of Mind class he taught is the one I think back on most often. The subject matter has only grown in rele

Of all the things I studied at Berkeley, the Philosophy of Mind class he taught is the one I think back on most often. The subject matter has only grown in relevance with time. In general, I think he's spectacularly misunderstood. For instance: he believed that it was entirely possible to create conscious artificial beings (at least in principle). So why do so many people misunderstand the Chinese Room argument to be saying the opposite? My theory is that most people encounter his ideas from secondary sources that subtly misrepresent his argument. At the risk of following in their footsteps, I'll try to very succinctly summarize my understanding. He doesn't argue that consciousness can only emerge from biological neurons. His argument is much narrower: consciousness can't be instantiated purely in language. The Chinese Room argument might mislead people into thinking it's an epistemology claim ("knowing" the Chinese language) when it's really an ontology claim (consciousness and its objective, independent mode of existence). If you think you disagree with him (as I once did), please consider the possibility that you've only been exposed to an ersatz characterization of his argument.

dr_dshiv 1y ago
This is true of many philosophers. Once you read the source materials, you realize the depth of the material.
tsimionescu 1y ago
> His argument is much narrower: consciousness can't be instantiated purely in language. No, his argument is that consciousness can't be instantiated purely in software, that it requires specialized hardware. Language is irrelevant, it was only an example. But his belief, which he articulates very explicitly in the article, is that you couldn't create a machine consciousness by running even a perfect simulation of a biological brain on a digital computer, neuron for neuron and synapse for synapse. He likens this simulation of a brain, which wouldn't think, to a simulation of a fire, which can't burn down a real building. Instead, he believes that you could create a machine consciousness by building a brain of electronic neurons, with condensers for every biological dendrite, or whatever the right electric circuit you'd pick. He believed that this is somehow different than a simulation, with no clear reason whatsoever as to why. His ideas are very much muddy, and while he accuses others of supporting cartesian dualism when they think the brain and the mind can be separated, that you can "run" the mind on a different substrate, it is in fact obvious he held dualistic notions where there is something obviously special about the mind-brain interaction that is not purely computational.
- mjburgess 1y ago
  > this simulation of a brain, which wouldn't think, to a simulation of a fire, which can't burn down a real building > with no clear reason whatsoever as to why It's not clear to me how you can understand that fire has particular causal powers (to burn, and so on) that are not instantiated in a simulation of fire; and yet not understand the same for biological processes. The world is a particular set of causal relationships. "Computational" descriptions do not have a causal semantics, so aren't about properties had in the world. The program itself has no causal semantics, it's about numbers. A program which computes the fibonacci sequence describes equally-well the growth of a sunflower's seeds and the agglomeration of galactic matter in certain galaxies. A "simulation" is, by definition, simply an accounting game by which a series of descriptive statements can be derived from some others -- which necessarily, lacks the causal relations of what is being described. A simulation of fire is, by definition, not on fire -- that is fire. A simulation is a game to help us think about the world: the ability to derive some descriptive statements about a system without instantiating the properties of that system is a trivial thing, and it is always disappointing at how easily it fools our species. You can move beads of wood around and compute the temperature of the sun -- this means nothing.
  - mattclarkdotnet 1y ago
    Because simulated fire burns other things in the simulation just as much as “real” fire burns real things. Searle &co assert that there is a real world that has special properties, without providing any way to show that we are living in it
    - mjburgess 1y ago
      > Because simulated fire burns other things in the simulation just as much as “real” fire burns real things. What we mean by a simulation is, by definition, a certain kind of "inference game" we play (eg., with beads and chalk) that help us think about the world. By definition, if that simulation has substantial properties, it isn't a simulation. If the claim is that an electrical device can implement the actual properties of biological intelligence, then the claim is not about a simulation. It's that by manufacturing some electrical system, plugging various devices into it, and so on -- that this physical object has non-simulated properties. Searle, and most other scientific naturalists who appreciate the world is real -- are not ruling out that it could be possible to manufacture a device with the real properties of intelligence. It's just that merely by, eg., implementing the fibonacci sequence, you havent done anything. A computation description doesnt imply any implementation properties. Further, when one looks at the properties of these electronic systems and the kinds of causal realtions they have with their environments via their devices, one finds very many reasons to suppose that they do not implement the relevant properties. Just as much as when one looks at a film strip under a microscope, one discovers that the picture on the screen was an illusion. Animals are very easily fooled, apes most of all -- living as we do in our own imaginations half the time. Science begins when you suspend this fantasy way of relating to the world, look it its actual properties. If your world view requires equivocating between fantasy and reality, then sure, anything goes. This is a high price to pay to cling on to the idea that the film is real, and there's a train racing towards you in your cinema seat.
gwd 1y ago
> He doesn't argue that consciousness can only emerge from biological neurons. His argument is much narrower: consciousness can't be instantiated purely in language. I haven't read loads of his work directly, but this quote from him would seem to contradict your claim: > I demonstrated years ago with the so-called Chinese Room Argument that the implementation of the computer program is not by itself sufficient for consciousness or intentionality (Searle 1980). Computation is defined purely formally or syntactically, whereas minds have actual mental or semantic contents, and we cannot get from syntactical to the semantic just by having the syntactical operations and nothing else. [1] Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to me to have proven anything; it's merely made an accurate analogy for how a computer works. So, if "semantics" and "understanding" can live in <processor, program, state> tuples, then the Chinese Room as a system can have semantics and understanding, as can computers; and if "semantics" and "understanding" cannot live in <processor, program, state> tuples, then neither the Chinese Room nor computers can have understanding. [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/
- Zarathruster 1y ago
  Sorry, I've reread this a few times and I'm not sure which part of Searle's argument you think I mischaracterized. Could you clarify? For emphasis: > "consciousness can't be instantiated purely in language" (mine) > "we cannot get from syntactical to the semantic just by having the syntactical operations and nothing else" (Searle) I get that the mapping isn't 1:1 but if you think the loss of precision is significant, I'd like to know where. > Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to me to have proven anything; it's merely made an accurate analogy for how a computer works. So, if "semantics" and "understanding" can live in <processor, program, state> tuples, then the Chinese Room as a system can have semantics and understanding, as can computers; and if "semantics" and "understanding" cannot live in <processor, program, state> tuples, then neither the Chinese Room nor computers can have understanding. There's a lot of debate on this point elsewhere in the thread, but Searle's response to this particular objection is here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/#SystRepl https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/#SystRepl
  - 1y ago
112233 1y ago
I have yet to see anything to convince me he was not being a troll and making that argument deliberately so jumbled up in bad faith. First of all, what purpose the person in the room serves, but to confuse and misdirect? Replace that person with a machine, and argument looses any impact. His response to system reply is extremely egregious. How can that have been made in good faith? (to paraphrase: "the whole system understands chinese" — "no, a person can run the system in their head, it means the system cannot understand anything that the person running it does not") What kind of nonsense response is that? Either the guy was LV80 troll, or I dunno..
munch117 1y ago
> If you think you disagree with him (as I once did), please consider the possibility that you've only been exposed to an ersatz characterization of his argument. My first exposure was a video of Searle himself explaining the Chinese room argument. It came across as a claim that a whole can never be more than its parts. It made as much sense as claiming that a car cannot possibly drive, as it consists of parts that separately cannot drive.
- tim333 1y ago
  This https://youtu.be/6tzjcnPsZ_w https://youtu.be/6tzjcnPsZ_w maybe? It's Searle explaining it.
saltcured 1y ago
I also remember a course from him decades ago, but I'm not sure this memorial post is the place for my take. Instead, let me attempt to re-tell a joke I heard back then... John Searle and George Lakoff walk into a bar. Searle exclaims, "What do you know!" The bar replies sardonically, "You wouldn't believe it." Lakoff sighs, "This is 0.8 drinks with Lotfi Zadeh..."

dr_dshiv 1y ago

This is true of many philosophers. Once you read the source materials, you realize the depth of the material.

tsimionescu 1y ago

> His argument is much narrower: consciousness can't be instantiated purely in language. No, his argument is that consciousness can't be instantiated purely in software, that it requires specialized hardware. Language is irrelevant, it was only an example. But his belief, which he articulates very explicitly in the article, is that you couldn't create a machine consciousness by running even a perfect simulation of a biological brain on a digital computer, neuron for neuron and synapse for synapse. He likens this simulation of a brain, which wouldn't think, to a simulation of a fire, which can't burn down a real building. Instead, he believes that you could create a machine consciousness by building a brain of electronic neurons, with condensers for every biological dendrite, or whatever the right electric circuit you'd pick. He believed that this is somehow different than a simulation, with no clear reason whatsoever as to why. His ideas are very much muddy, and while he accuses others of supporting cartesian dualism when they think the brain and the mind can be separated, that you can "run" the mind on a different substrate, it is in fact obvious he held dualistic notions where there is something obviously special about the mind-brain interaction that is not purely computational.

mjburgess 1y ago
> this simulation of a brain, which wouldn't think, to a simulation of a fire, which can't burn down a real building > with no clear reason whatsoever as to why It's not clear to me how you can understand that fire has particular causal powers (to burn, and so on) that are not instantiated in a simulation of fire; and yet not understand the same for biological processes. The world is a particular set of causal relationships. "Computational" descriptions do not have a causal semantics, so aren't about properties had in the world. The program itself has no causal semantics, it's about numbers. A program which computes the fibonacci sequence describes equally-well the growth of a sunflower's seeds and the agglomeration of galactic matter in certain galaxies. A "simulation" is, by definition, simply an accounting game by which a series of descriptive statements can be derived from some others -- which necessarily, lacks the causal relations of what is being described. A simulation of fire is, by definition, not on fire -- that is fire. A simulation is a game to help us think about the world: the ability to derive some descriptive statements about a system without instantiating the properties of that system is a trivial thing, and it is always disappointing at how easily it fools our species. You can move beads of wood around and compute the temperature of the sun -- this means nothing.
- mattclarkdotnet 1y ago
  Because simulated fire burns other things in the simulation just as much as “real” fire burns real things. Searle &co assert that there is a real world that has special properties, without providing any way to show that we are living in it
  - mjburgess 1y ago
    > Because simulated fire burns other things in the simulation just as much as “real” fire burns real things. What we mean by a simulation is, by definition, a certain kind of "inference game" we play (eg., with beads and chalk) that help us think about the world. By definition, if that simulation has substantial properties, it isn't a simulation. If the claim is that an electrical device can implement the actual properties of biological intelligence, then the claim is not about a simulation. It's that by manufacturing some electrical system, plugging various devices into it, and so on -- that this physical object has non-simulated properties. Searle, and most other scientific naturalists who appreciate the world is real -- are not ruling out that it could be possible to manufacture a device with the real properties of intelligence. It's just that merely by, eg., implementing the fibonacci sequence, you havent done anything. A computation description doesnt imply any implementation properties. Further, when one looks at the properties of these electronic systems and the kinds of causal realtions they have with their environments via their devices, one finds very many reasons to suppose that they do not implement the relevant properties. Just as much as when one looks at a film strip under a microscope, one discovers that the picture on the screen was an illusion. Animals are very easily fooled, apes most of all -- living as we do in our own imaginations half the time. Science begins when you suspend this fantasy way of relating to the world, look it its actual properties. If your world view requires equivocating between fantasy and reality, then sure, anything goes. This is a high price to pay to cling on to the idea that the film is real, and there's a train racing towards you in your cinema seat.

gwd 1y ago

> He doesn't argue that consciousness can only emerge from biological neurons. His argument is much narrower: consciousness can't be instantiated purely in language. I haven't read loads of his work directly, but this quote from him would seem to contradict your claim: > I demonstrated years ago with the so-called Chinese Room Argument that the implementation of the computer program is not by itself sufficient for consciousness or intentionality (Searle 1980). Computation is defined purely formally or syntactically, whereas minds have actual mental or semantic contents, and we cannot get from syntactical to the semantic just by having the syntactical operations and nothing else. [1] Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to me to have proven anything; it's merely made an accurate analogy for how a computer works. So, if "semantics" and "understanding" can live in <processor, program, state> tuples, then the Chinese Room as a system can have semantics and understanding, as can computers; and if "semantics" and "understanding" cannot live in <processor, program, state> tuples, then neither the Chinese Room nor computers can have understanding. [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

Zarathruster 1y ago
Sorry, I've reread this a few times and I'm not sure which part of Searle's argument you think I mischaracterized. Could you clarify? For emphasis: > "consciousness can't be instantiated purely in language" (mine) > "we cannot get from syntactical to the semantic just by having the syntactical operations and nothing else" (Searle) I get that the mapping isn't 1:1 but if you think the loss of precision is significant, I'd like to know where. > Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to me to have proven anything; it's merely made an accurate analogy for how a computer works. So, if "semantics" and "understanding" can live in <processor, program, state> tuples, then the Chinese Room as a system can have semantics and understanding, as can computers; and if "semantics" and "understanding" cannot live in <processor, program, state> tuples, then neither the Chinese Room nor computers can have understanding. There's a lot of debate on this point elsewhere in the thread, but Searle's response to this particular objection is here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/#SystRepl https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/#SystRepl
- 1y ago

112233 1y ago

I have yet to see anything to convince me he was not being a troll and making that argument deliberately so jumbled up in bad faith. First of all, what purpose the person in the room serves, but to confuse and misdirect? Replace that person with a machine, and argument looses any impact. His response to system reply is extremely egregious. How can that have been made in good faith? (to paraphrase: "the whole system understands chinese" — "no, a person can run the system in their head, it means the system cannot understand anything that the person running it does not") What kind of nonsense response is that? Either the guy was LV80 troll, or I dunno..

munch117 1y ago

> If you think you disagree with him (as I once did), please consider the possibility that you've only been exposed to an ersatz characterization of his argument. My first exposure was a video of Searle himself explaining the Chinese room argument. It came across as a claim that a whole can never be more than its parts. It made as much sense as claiming that a car cannot possibly drive, as it consists of parts that separately cannot drive.

tim333 1y ago
This https://youtu.be/6tzjcnPsZ_w https://youtu.be/6tzjcnPsZ_w maybe? It's Searle explaining it.

saltcured 1y ago

I also remember a course from him decades ago, but I'm not sure this memorial post is the place for my take. Instead, let me attempt to re-tell a joke I heard back then... John Searle and George Lakoff walk into a bar. Searle exclaims, "What do you know!" The bar replies sardonically, "You wouldn't believe it." Lakoff sighs, "This is 0.8 drinks with Lotfi Zadeh..."