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To everyone insisting that the argument is silly: while in this particular case I do disagree with the conclusion, I'd encourage you to pause for a moment befor

To everyone insisting that the argument is silly: while in this particular case I do disagree with the conclusion, I'd encourage you to pause for a moment before dismissing it. I often find that when I approach philosophical theories with too critical a mindset, I dismiss it too quickly, and, if I spend the time afterwrd, find the issue more complicated than it appeared at first. It's something like being posed a coding problem, going "Oh, that's simple!", and then discovering later that the problem, is, in fact, quite complex. On the topic of philosophy, in general, though, Bertrand Russell says it better than I can: "Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true. This exercise of historical and psychological imagination at once enlarges the scope of our thinking, and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind."

dsfsdfd 12y ago
Except it's not a good argument - if you believe knowledge is equivalent to experience. In order to understand what ammonia smells like I need to understand how the mind as a whole interprets the presence of ammonia. Once you have understood how the mind interacts with ammonia then you know what it is like to experience the smell of ammonia. You might say well, I can imagine how it must feel to understand how the mind works and my internal model of how it must be to understand how the mind works indicates to me that this would not allow me to experience the smell of ammonia. But you would be wrong. Just as the machine in the Chinese room argument understands Chinese and understands that part of the world described within Chinese.
mannykannot 12y ago
The use of outlandish thought experiments is fraught with problems, not the least of which is philosophers' predilection to accept intuition and common sense in supposing what the outcome would be. This is particularly clearly demonstrated in Searle's Chinese Room argument, which is really just an attempt to disguise a personal opinion as a rational conclusion. The fundamental problem here is that, unlike in science, philosophical thought experiments are not constrained by reality, so they tend to ultimately become self-referential arguments over which axioms to accept, but with no objective basis for deciding between them.

dsfsdfd 12y ago

Except it's not a good argument - if you believe knowledge is equivalent to experience. In order to understand what ammonia smells like I need to understand how the mind as a whole interprets the presence of ammonia. Once you have understood how the mind interacts with ammonia then you know what it is like to experience the smell of ammonia. You might say well, I can imagine how it must feel to understand how the mind works and my internal model of how it must be to understand how the mind works indicates to me that this would not allow me to experience the smell of ammonia. But you would be wrong. Just as the machine in the Chinese room argument understands Chinese and understands that part of the world described within Chinese.

mannykannot 12y ago

The use of outlandish thought experiments is fraught with problems, not the least of which is philosophers' predilection to accept intuition and common sense in supposing what the outcome would be. This is particularly clearly demonstrated in Searle's Chinese Room argument, which is really just an attempt to disguise a personal opinion as a rational conclusion. The fundamental problem here is that, unlike in science, philosophical thought experiments are not constrained by reality, so they tend to ultimately become self-referential arguments over which axioms to accept, but with no objective basis for deciding between them.