Chinese room
Encyclopedia
The Chinese room is a thought experiment
Thought experiment
A thought experiment or Gedankenexperiment considers some hypothesis, theory, or principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences...

 by John Searle
John Searle
John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...

, which first appeared in his paper "Minds, Brains, and Programs", published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Behavioral and Brain Sciences is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of Open Peer Commentary founded in 1978 by Stevan Harnad and published by Cambridge University Press...

 in 1980. It addresses the question: if a machine can convincingly simulate an intelligent conversation, does it necessarily understand? In the experiment, Searle imagines himself in a room, acting as a computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

 by manually executing a program
Computer program
A computer program is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute...

 that convincingly simulates the behavior of a native Chinese speaker. People outside the room slide Chinese characters under the door and Searle, to whom "Chinese writing is just so many meaningless squiggles", is able to create sensible replies, in Chinese, by following the instructions of the program; that is, by moving papers around. The question arises whether Searle can be said to understand Chinese in the same way that, as Searle says:
according to strong AI, . . . the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind, in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to understand and have other cognitive states.

The experiment is the centerpiece of Searle's Chinese Room Argument which holds that a program cannot give a computer a "mind" or "understanding", regardless of how intelligently it may make it behave. He concludes that "programs are neither constitutive of nor sufficient for minds." "I can have any formal program you like, but I still understand nothing."
The Chinese room is an argument against certain claims of leading thinkers in the field of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

, and is not concerned with the level of intelligence that an AI program can display. Searle's argument is directed against functionalism
Functionalism
Functionalism may refer to:* Functionalism , or structural functionalism, a theoretical tradition within sociology and anthropology* Functionalism * Functionalism...

 and computationalism (philosophical positions inspired by AI), rather than the goals of applied AI research itself. The argument leaves aside the question of creating an artificial mind by methods other than symbol manipulation.

Controversial, and the subject of an entire literature of counterargument, it became Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Behavioral and Brain Sciences is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of Open Peer Commentary founded in 1978 by Stevan Harnad and published by Cambridge University Press...

s "most influential target article", generating an enormous number of commentaries and responses in the ensuing decades.

Chinese room thought experiment

Searle's thought experiment
Thought experiment
A thought experiment or Gedankenexperiment considers some hypothesis, theory, or principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences...

 begins with this hypothetical premise: suppose that artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 research has succeeded in constructing a computer that behaves as if it understands Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

. It takes Chinese character
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...

s as input and, by following the instructions of a computer program
Computer program
A computer program is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute...

, produces other Chinese characters, which it presents as output. Suppose, says Searle, that this computer performs its task so convincingly that it comfortably passes the Turing test
Turing test
The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...

: it convinces a human Chinese speaker that the program is itself a live Chinese speaker. To all of the questions that the person asks, it makes appropriate responses, such that any Chinese speaker would be convinced that he or she is talking to another Chinese-speaking human being.

The question Searle wants to answer is this: does the machine literally "understand" Chinese? Or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese? Searle calls the first position "strong AI" (see below) and the latter "weak AI".

Searle then supposes that he is in a closed room and has a book with an English version of the computer program, along with sufficient paper, pencils, erasers, and filing cabinets. Searle could receive Chinese characters through a slot in the door, process them according to the program's instructions, and produce Chinese characters as output. As the computer had passed the Turing test this way, it is fair, says Searle, to deduce that he would be able to do so as well, simply by running the program manually.

Searle asserts that there is no essential difference between the role the computer plays in the first case and the role he plays in the latter. Each is simply following a program, step-by-step, which simulates intelligent behavior. And yet, Searle points out, "I don't speak a word of Chinese." Since he does not understand Chinese, Searle argues, we must infer that the computer does not understand Chinese either.

Searle argues that without "understanding" (what philosophers call "intentionality
Intentionality
The term intentionality was introduced by Jeremy Bentham as a principle of utility in his doctrine of consciousness for the purpose of distinguishing acts that are intentional and acts that are not...

"), we cannot describe what the machine is doing as "thinking". Because it does not think, it does not have a "mind" in anything like the normal sense of the word, according to Searle. Therefore, he concludes, "strong AI" is misnomer.

History

Searle's argument first appeared in his paper "Minds, Brains, and Programs", published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Behavioral and Brain Sciences is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of Open Peer Commentary founded in 1978 by Stevan Harnad and published by Cambridge University Press...

 in 1980. It eventually became the journal's "most influential target article", generating an enormous number of commentaries and responses in the ensuing decades.

Most of the discussion consists of attempts to refute it. "The overwhelming majority," notes BBS
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Behavioral and Brain Sciences is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of Open Peer Commentary founded in 1978 by Stevan Harnad and published by Cambridge University Press...

 editor Stevan Harnad
Stevan Harnad
Stevan Harnad is a cognitive scientist.- Career :Harnad was born in Budapest, Hungary. He did his undergraduate work at McGill University and his graduate work at Princeton University's Department of Psychology...

, "still think that the Chinese Room Argument is dead wrong." The sheer volume of the literature that has grown up around it inspired Pat Hayes
Patrick J. Hayes
Patrick John Hayes or Pat Hayes is a British computer scientist who lives and works in the United States. , he is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola, Florida. He received a B.A. in Mathematics from University of Cambridge and a Ph.D...

 to quip that the field of cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...

 ought to be redefined as "the ongoing research program of showing Searle's Chinese Room Argument to be false."

The paper has become "something of a classic in cognitive science," according to Harnad. Varol Akman
Varol Akman
Varol Akman is the Chairperson of the Department of Philosophy and Professor of Computer Engineering in Bilkent University, Ankara....

 agrees, and has described Searle's paper as "an exemplar of philosophical clarity and purity".

Searle's targets: "strong AI" and computationalism

Although the Chinese Room argument was originally presented in reaction to the statements of AI
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 researchers, philosophers have come to view it as an important part of the philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...

. It is a challenge to functionalism
Functionalism (philosophy of mind)
Functionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviourism. Its core idea is that mental states are constituted solely by their functional role — that is, they are causal relations to other mental...

 and the computational theory of mind
Computational theory of mind
In philosophy, the computational theory of mind is the view that the human mind is an information processing system and that thinking is a form of computing. The theory was proposed in its modern form by Hilary Putnam in 1961 and developed by Jerry Fodor in the 60s and 70s...

, and is related to such questions as the mind-body problem
Mind-body dichotomy
The mind-body problem is a philosophical problem arising in the fields of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. The problem arises because mental phenomena appear to be qualitatively and substantially different from the physical bodies on which they appear to depend. There are a few major theories on...

, the problem of other minds
Problem of other minds
The problem of other minds has traditionally been regarded as an epistemological challenge raised by the skeptic. The challenge may be expressed as follows: given that I can only observe the behavior of others, how can I know that others have minds? The thought behind the question is that no matter...

, the symbol-grounding
Symbol grounding
The Symbol Grounding Problem is related to the problem of how words get their meanings, and hence to the problem of what meaning itself really is. The problem of meaning is in turn related to the problem of consciousness, or how it is that mental states are meaningful...

 problem, and the hard problem of consciousness
Hard problem of consciousness
The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why we have qualitative phenomenal experiences. David Chalmers contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, etc...

.

Strong AI

Searle identified a philosophical position he calls "strong AI":
The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds.

The definition hinges on the distinction between simulating a mind and actually having a mind. Searle writes that "according to Strong AI, the correct simulation really is a mind. According to Weak AI, the correct simulation is a model of the mind."

The position is implicit in some of the statements of early AI researchers and analysts. For example, in 1955, AI founder Herbert Simon
Herbert Simon
Herbert Alexander Simon was an American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist, and professor—most notably at Carnegie Mellon University—whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, public administration, economics,...

 declared that "there are now in the world machines that think, that learn and create" and claimed that they had "solved the venerable mind-body problem, explaining how a system composed of matter can have the properties of mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...

." John Haugeland
John Haugeland
John Haugeland was a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago from 1999 until his death. He was chair of the philosophy department from 2004-2007. He spent at most of his career teaching at the University of Pittsburgh...

 wrote that "AI wants only the genuine article: machines with minds, in the full and literal sense. This is not science fiction, but real science, based on a theoretical conception as deep as it is daring: namely, we are, at root, computers ourselves."

Searle also ascribes the following positions to advocates of strong AI:
  • AI systems can be used to explain the mind;
  • The study of the brain is irrelevant to the study of the mind; and
  • The Turing test
    Turing test
    The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...

     is adequate for establishing the existence of mental states.

Strong AI as computationalism or functionalism

In more recent presentations of the Chinese room argument, Searle has identified "strong AI" as "computer functionalism
Functionalism (philosophy of mind)
Functionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviourism. Its core idea is that mental states are constituted solely by their functional role — that is, they are causal relations to other mental...

" (a term he attributes to Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...

). Functionalism is a position in modern philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...

 that holds that we can define mental phenomena (such as beliefs, desires, and perceptions) by describing their functions in relation to each other and to the outside world. Because a computer program can accurately represent functional relationships as relationships between symbols, a computer can have mental phenomena if it runs the right program, according to functionalism.

Stevan Harnad
Stevan Harnad
Stevan Harnad is a cognitive scientist.- Career :Harnad was born in Budapest, Hungary. He did his undergraduate work at McGill University and his graduate work at Princeton University's Department of Psychology...

 argues that Searle's depictions of strong AI can be reformulated as "recognizable tenets of computationalism, a position (unlike 'strong AI') that is actually held by many thinkers, and hence one worth refuting." Computationalism is the position in the philosophy of mind which argues that the mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...

 can be accurately described as an information-processing
Information processing
Information processing is the change of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process which describes everything which happens in the universe, from the falling of a rock to the printing of a text file from a digital computer system...

 system.

Each of the following, according to Harnad, is a "tenet" of computationalism:
  • Mental states are computational states (which is why computers can have mental states and help to explain the mind);
  • Computational states are implementation-independent
    Multiple realizability
    Multiple realizability, in philosophy of mind, is the thesis that the same mental property, state, or event can be implemented by different physical properties, states or events...

     — in other words, it is the software that determines the computational state, not the hardware (which is why the brain, being hardware, is irrelevant); and that
  • Since implementation is unimportant, the only empirical data that matters is how the system functions; hence the Turing test
    Turing test
    The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...

     is definitive.

Computers vs. machines vs. brains

The Chinese room has exactly the same design as any modern computer. It has a Von Neumann architecture
Von Neumann architecture
The term Von Neumann architecture, aka the Von Neumann model, derives from a computer architecture proposal by the mathematician and early computer scientist John von Neumann and others, dated June 30, 1945, entitled First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC...

, which consists of a program (the book of instructions), some memory (the papers and file cabinets), a CPU
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...

 which follows the instructions (the man), and a means to write symbols in memory (the pencil and eraser). A machine with this design is known in theoretical computer science
Theoretical computer science
Theoretical computer science is a division or subset of general computer science and mathematics which focuses on more abstract or mathematical aspects of computing....

 as "Turing complete", because it has the necessary machinery to carry out any computation that a Turing machine
Turing machine
A Turing machine is a theoretical device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite its simplicity, a Turing machine can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm, and is particularly useful in explaining the functions of a CPU inside a...

 can do, and therefore it is capable of doing a step-by-step simulation of any other digital machine. Alan Turing
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...

 writes, "all digital computers are in a sense equivalent." In other words, the Chinese room can do whatever any other computer can do (albeit much, much more slowly). The widely accepted Church-Turing thesis holds that any function computable by an effective procedure is computable by a Turing machine.
The Chinese room (and all modern computers) manipulates physical objects in order to carry out calculations and do simulations. AI researchers Allen Newell
Allen Newell
Allen Newell was a researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND corporation and at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, Tepper School of Business, and Department of Psychology...

 and Herbert Simon
Herbert Simon
Herbert Alexander Simon was an American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist, and professor—most notably at Carnegie Mellon University—whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, public administration, economics,...

 called this kind of machine a physical symbol system
Physical symbol system
A physical symbol system takes physical patterns , combining them into structures and manipulating them to produce new expressions....

. It is also equivalent to the formal system
Formal system
In formal logic, a formal system consists of a formal language and a set of inference rules, used to derive an expression from one or more other premises that are antecedently supposed or derived . The axioms and rules may be called a deductive apparatus...

s used in the field of mathematical logic
Mathematical logic
Mathematical logic is a subfield of mathematics with close connections to foundations of mathematics, theoretical computer science and philosophical logic. The field includes both the mathematical study of logic and the applications of formal logic to other areas of mathematics...

. Searle emphasizes the fact that this kind of symbol manipulation is syntactic
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

 (borrowing a term from the study of grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

). The CPU
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...

 manipulates the symbols using a form of syntax rule
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

s, without any knowledge of the symbol's semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....

 (that is, their meaning
Meaning (semiotics)
In semiotics, the meaning of a sign is its place in a sign relation, in other words, the set of roles that it occupies within a given sign relation. This statement holds whether sign is taken to mean a sign type or a sign token...

).
Searle's argument applies specifically to computers (that is, devices that can only manipulate symbols without knowing what they mean) and not to machines in general. Searle does not disagree that machines can have consciousness and understanding, because, as he writes, "we are precisely such machines". Searle holds that the brain is, in fact, a machine, but the brain gives rise to consciousness and understanding using machinery that is non-computational. Searle writes "brains cause minds" and that "actual human mental phenomena [are] dependent on actual physical-chemical properties of actual human brains", a position called "biological naturalism
Biological naturalism
Biological naturalism is a monist theory about the relationship between mind and body , and hence an approach to the mind-body problem...

" (as opposed to alternatives like dualism
Dualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...

, behaviorism
Behaviorism
Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective , is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking, and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior...

, functionalism
Functionalism (philosophy of mind)
Functionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviourism. Its core idea is that mental states are constituted solely by their functional role — that is, they are causal relations to other mental...

 or identity theory
Type physicalism
Type physicalism is a physicalist theory, in philosophy of mind. It asserts that mental events can be grouped into types, and can then be correlated with types of physical events in the brain...

). Indeed, Searle accuses "strong AI" of dualism
Dualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...

, the idea that the brain and mind are made of different "substances". He writes that "strong AI only makes sense given the dualistic assumption that, where the mind is concerned, the brain doesn't matter."

Intentionality vs. consciousness

Searle's original argument centered on 'understanding' — that is, mental states with what philosophers call 'intentionality
Intentionality
The term intentionality was introduced by Jeremy Bentham as a principle of utility in his doctrine of consciousness for the purpose of distinguishing acts that are intentional and acts that are not...

' — and did not directly address other closely related ideas such as 'consciousness'. David Chalmers
David Chalmers
David John Chalmers is an Australian philosopher specializing in the area of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, whose recent work concerns verbal disputes. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University...

 argued that "it is fairly clear that consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...

 is at the root of the matter". In more recent presentations of the Chinese Room, Searle has included 'consciousness' as part of the argument as well.

Strong AI vs. AI research

Searle's argument does not limit the intelligence with which machines can behave or act; indeed, it does not address this issue directly. "The Chinese room argument ... assumes complete success on the part of artificial intelligence in simulating human cognition," Searle writes. This leaves open the possibility that a machine could be built that acts more intelligent than a person, but does not have a mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...

 or intentionality
Intentionality
The term intentionality was introduced by Jeremy Bentham as a principle of utility in his doctrine of consciousness for the purpose of distinguishing acts that are intentional and acts that are not...

 in the same way that brain
Human brain
The human brain has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times larger than the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size. Estimates for the number of neurons in the human brain range from 80 to 120 billion...

s do.

Since the primary mission of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 research is only to create useful systems that act intelligently, Searle's arguments are not usually considered an issue for AI research. Stuart Russell
Stuart Russell
Stuart Russell may refer to:* Stuart Russell , British Conservative party politician, MP for Darwen 1935–1943* Stuart J. Russell , computer scientist known for his contributions to artificial intelligence...

 and Peter Norvig
Peter Norvig
Peter Norvig is an American computer scientist. He is currently the Director of Research at Google Inc.-Educational Background:...

 observe that most AI researchers "don't care about the strong AI hypothesis—as long as the program works, they don't care whether you call it a simulation of intelligence or real intelligence."

Searle's "strong AI" should not be confused with "strong AI
Strong AI
Strong AI is artificial intelligence that matches or exceeds human intelligence — the intelligence of a machine that can successfully perform any intellectual task that a human being can. It is a primary goal of artificial intelligence research and an important topic for science fiction writers and...

" as defined by Ray Kurzweil and other futurists, who use the term to describe machine intelligence that rivals or exceeds human intelligence. Kurzweil is concerned primarily with the amount of intelligence displayed by the machine, whereas Searle's argument sets no limit on this, as long as it is understood that it is a simulation and not the real thing.

Replies

Replies to Searle's argument may be classified according to what they claim to show:
  • Those which identify who speaks Chinese;
  • Those which demonstrate how meaningless symbols can become meaningful;
  • Those which suggest that the Chinese room should be redesigned in some way;
  • Those which contend that Searle's argument is misleading; and
  • Those which argue that the argument makes false assumptions about subjective conscious experience and therefore proves nothing.


Some of the arguments (robot and brain simulation, for example) fall into multiple categories.

System and virtual mind replies: finding the mind

These replies attempt to answer the question: since the man in the room doesn't speak Chinese, where is the "mind" that does? These replies address the key ontological issues of mind vs. body and simulation vs. reality. All of the replies that identify the mind in the room are versions of "the system reply".

System reply: The basic "system reply" argues that it is the "whole system" which understands Chinese. While the man understands only English, when he is combined with the program, scratch paper, pencils and file cabinets, they form a system that can understand Chinese. "Here, understanding is not being ascribed to the mere individual; rather it is being ascribed to this whole system of which he is a part" Searle explains. The fact that man does not understand Chinese is irrelevant, because it is only the system as a whole which matters.
Searle notes that (in this simple version of the systems reply) there is nothing more than a list of physical objects; it grants the power of understanding and consciousness to "the conjunction of that person and bits of paper". Searle responds by simplifying the list of physical objects: he asks what happens if the man memorizes the rules and keeps track of everything in his head? Then the whole system consists of just one object: the man himself. Searle argues that if the man doesn't understand Chinese then the system doesn't understand Chinese either and the fact that the man appears to understand Chinese proves nothing. Critics of Searle's response argue that the program has allowed the man to have two minds in one head.


More sophisticated versions of the system reply try to identify more precisely what "the system" is and they differ in exactly how they describe it. According to these replies, the "mind that speaks Chinese" could be such things as: the "software", a "program", a "running program", a simulation of the "neural correlates of consciousness", the "functional system", a "simulated mind", an "emergent
Strong emergence
Strong emergence is a type of emergence in which the emergent property is irreducible to its individual constituents. Some philosophers have proposed that qualia and consciousness demonstrate strong emergence...

 property", or "a virtual
Virtual (computing)
The word virtual has been applied to computing and information technology with various meanings.It is used of software systems that act as if they were hardware systems , of computer-generated simulations of reality , and of internet gaming environments wherein entire worlds are created or the...

 mind" (Marvin Minsky
Marvin Minsky
Marvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...

's version of the system reply, described below).

Virtual mind reply: The term "virtual
Virtual (computing)
The word virtual has been applied to computing and information technology with various meanings.It is used of software systems that act as if they were hardware systems , of computer-generated simulations of reality , and of internet gaming environments wherein entire worlds are created or the...

" is used in computer science to describe an object which appears to exist "in" a computer (or computer network) only because software is making it appear to exist. The objects "inside" computers (including files, folders, and so on) are all "virtual", except for the computer's electronic components. Similarly, Minsky
Marvin Minsky
Marvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...

 argues, a computer may contain a "mind" that is virtual in the same sense as virtual machine
Virtual machine
A virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...

s, virtual communities
Virtual community
A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals...

 and virtual reality
Virtual reality
Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...

.
To clarify the distinction between the simple systems reply given above and virtual mind reply, David Cole notes that two simulations could be running on one system at the same time; one speaking Chinese and one speaking Korean. While there is only one system, there can be multiple "virtual minds."

Searle responds that such a mind is, at best, a simulation, and writes: "No one supposes that computer simulations of a five-alarm fire will burn the neighborhood down or that a computer simulation of a rainstorm will leave us all drenched." Nicholas Fearn responds that, for some things, simulation is as good as the real thing. "When we call up the pocket calculator function on a desktop computer, the image of a pocket calculator appears on the screen. We don't complain that 'it isn't really a calculator', because the physical attributes of the device do not matter." The question is, is the human mind like the pocket calculator, essentially composed of information? Or is the mind like the rainstorm, something other than a computer, and not realizable in full by a computer simulation? (The issue of simulation is also discussed in the article synthetic intelligence
Synthetic intelligence
Synthetic intelligence is an alternative term for artificial intelligence which emphasizes that the intelligence of machines need not be an imitation or any way artificial; it can be a genuine form of intelligence. John Haugeland proposes an analogy with artificial and synthetic diamonds—only the...

.)


These replies provide an explanation of exactly who it is that understands Chinese. If there is something besides the man in the room that can understand Chinese, Searle can't argue that (1) the man doesn't understand Chinese, therefore (2) nothing in the room understands Chinese. This, according to those who make this reply, shows that Searle's argument fails to prove that "strong AI" is false.

However, the replies, by themselves, do not prove that strong AI is true, either: they provide no evidence that the system (or the virtual mind) understands Chinese, other than the hypothetical premise that it passes the Turing Test
Turing test
The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...

. As Searle writes "the systems reply simply begs the question by insisting that system must understand Chinese."

Robot and semantics replies: finding the meaning

As far as the person in the room is concerned, the symbols are just meaningless "squiggles." But if the Chinese room really "understands" what it's saying, then the symbols must get their meaning from somewhere. These arguments attempt to connect the symbols to the things they symbolize. These replies address Searle's concerns about intentionality
Intentionality
The term intentionality was introduced by Jeremy Bentham as a principle of utility in his doctrine of consciousness for the purpose of distinguishing acts that are intentional and acts that are not...

, symbol grounding
Symbol grounding
The Symbol Grounding Problem is related to the problem of how words get their meanings, and hence to the problem of what meaning itself really is. The problem of meaning is in turn related to the problem of consciousness, or how it is that mental states are meaningful...

 and syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

 vs. semantics.

Robot reply: Suppose that instead of a room, the program was placed into a robot that could wander around and interact with its environment. This would allow a "causal
Causality
Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....

 connection" between the symbols and things they represent. Hans Moravec
Hans Moravec
Hans Moravec is an adjunct faculty member at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. He is known for his work on robotics, artificial intelligence, and writings on the impact of technology. Moravec also is a futurist with many of his publications and predictions focusing on...

 comments: 'If we could graft a robot to a reasoning program, we wouldn't need a person to provide the meaning anymore: it would come from the physical world."
Searle’s reply is to suppose that, unbeknownst to the individual in the Chinese room, some of the inputs came directly from a camera mounted on a robot, and some of the outputs were used to manipulate the arms and legs of the robot. Nevertheless, the person in the room is still just following the rules, and does not know what the symbols mean. Searle writes "he doesn't see what comes into the robot's eyes." (See Mary's room
Mary's room
Mary's room is a philosophical thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal Qualia" and extended in "What Mary Didn't Know"...

 for a similar thought experiment.)


Derived meaning: Some respond that the room, as Searle describes it, is connected to the world: through the Chinese speakers that it is "talking" to and through the programmers who designed the knowledge base
Knowledge base
A knowledge base is a special kind of database for knowledge management. A Knowledge Base provides a means for information to be collected, organised, shared, searched and utilised.-Types:...

 in his file cabinet. The symbols Searle manipulates are already meaningful, they're just not meaningful to him.
Searle says that the symbols only have a "derived" meaning, like the meaning of words in books. The meaning of the symbols depends on the conscious understanding of the Chinese speakers and the programmers outside the room. The room, according to Searle, has no understanding of its own.


Commonsense knowledge / contextualist reply: Some have argued that the meanings of the symbols would come from a vast "background" of commonsense knowledge encoded in the program and the filing cabinets. This would provide a "context
Contextualism
Contextualism describes a collection of views in philosophy which emphasize the context in which an action, utterance, or expression occurs, and argues that, in some important respect, the action, utterance, or expression can only be understood relative to that context...

" that would give the symbols their meaning.
Searle agrees that this background exists, but he does not agree that it can be built into programs. Hubert Dreyfus
Hubert Dreyfus
Hubert Lederer Dreyfus is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley....

 has also criticized the idea that the "background" can be represented symbolically.


To each of these suggestions, Searle's response is the same: no matter how much knowledge is written into the program and no matter how the program is connected to the world, he is still in the room manipulating symbols according to rules. His actions are syntactic
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

 and this can never explain to him what the symbols stand for. Searle writes "syntax is insufficient for semantics."

However, for those who accept that Searle's actions simulate a mind, separate from his own, the important question is not what the symbols mean to Searle, what is important is what they mean to the virtual mind. While Searle is trapped in the room, the virtual mind is not: it is connected to the outside world through the Chinese speakers it speaks to, through the programmers who gave it world knowledge, and through the cameras and other sensors that roboticist
Roboticist
A roboticist designs, builds, programs, and experiments with robots. Since robotics is a highly interdisciplinary field, roboticists often have backgrounds in a number of disciplines including computer science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer engineering...

s can supply.

Brain simulation and connectionist replies: redesigning the room

These arguments are all versions of the systems reply that identify a particular kind of system as being important. They try to outline what kind of a system would be able to pass the Turing test and give rise to conscious awareness in a machine. (Note that the "robot" and "commonsense knowledge" replies above also specify a certain kind of system as being important.)

Brain simulator reply: Suppose that the program simulated in fine detail the action of every neuron in the brain of a Chinese speaker. This strengthens the intuition that there would be no significant difference between the operation of the program and the operation of a live human brain.
Searle replies that such a simulation will not have reproduced the important features of the brain — its causal and intentional states. Searle
John Searle
John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...

 is adamant that "human mental phenomena [are] dependent on actual physical-chemical properties of actual human brains." Moreover, he argues:


"[I]magine that instead of a monolingual man in a room shuffling symbols we have the man operate an elaborate set of water pipes with valves connecting them. When the man receives the Chinese symbols, he looks up in the program, written in English, which valves he has to turn on and off. Each water connection corresponds to a synapse in the Chinese brain, and the whole system is rigged up so that after doing all the right firings, that is after turning on all the right faucets, the Chinese answers pop out at the output end of the series of pipes.

Now where is the understanding in this system? It takes Chinese as input, it simulates the formal structure of the synapses of the Chinese brain, and it gives Chinese as output. But the man certainly doesn't understand Chinese, and neither do the water pipes, and if we are tempted to adopt what I think is the absurd view that somehow the conjunction of man and water pipes understands, remember that in principle the man can internalize the formal structure of the water pipes and do all the "neuron firings" in his imagination. "

Two variations on the brain simulator reply are:
China brain
China brain
In the philosophy of mind, the China brain thought experiment considers what would happen if each member of the Chinese nation were asked to simulate the action of one neuron in the brain, using telephones or walkie-talkies to simulate the axons and dendrites that connect neurons...

: What if we ask each citizen of China to simulate one neuron, using the telephone system to simulate the connections between axon
Axon
An axon is a long, slender projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, that conducts electrical impulses away from the neuron's cell body or soma....

s and dendrite
Dendrite
Dendrites are the branched projections of a neuron that act to conduct the electrochemical stimulation received from other neural cells to the cell body, or soma, of the neuron from which the dendrites project...

s? In this version, it seems obvious that no individual would have any understanding of what the brain might be saying.

Brain replacement scenario: In this, we are asked to imagine that engineers have invented a tiny computer that simulates the action of an individual neuron. What would happen if we replaced one neuron at a time? Replacing one would clearly do nothing to change conscious awareness. Replacing all of them would create a digital computer that simulates a brain. If Searle is right, then conscious awareness must disappear during the procedure (either gradually or all at once). Searle's critics argue that there would be no point during the procedure when he can claim that conscious awareness ends and mindless simulation begins. (See Ship of Theseus
Ship of Theseus
The Ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus' paradox, or various variants, notably grandfather's axe and Trigger's Broom is a paradox that raises the question of whether an object which has had all its component parts replaced remains fundamentally the same object.The paradox is most notably...

 for a similar thought experiment.)


Connectionist replies: Closely related to the brain simulator reply, this claims that a massively parallel connectionist architecture would be capable of understanding.

Combination reply: This response combines the robot reply with the brain simulation reply, arguing that a brain simulation connected to the world through a robot body could have a mind.

Arguments such as these (and the robot and commonsense knowledge replies above) recommend that Searle's room be redesigned. Searle's replies all point out that, however the program is written or however it is connected to the world, it is still being simulated by a simple step by step Turing complete machine (or machines). These machines are still just like the man in the room: they understand nothing and don't speak Chinese. They are merely manipulating symbols without knowing what they mean.

Searle also argues that, if features like a robot body or a connectionist architecture are required, then strong AI (as he understands it) has been abandoned. Either (1) Searle's room can't pass the Turing test, because formal symbol manipulation (by a Turing complete machine) is not enough, or (2) Searle's room could pass the Turing test, but the Turing test is not sufficient to determine if the room has a "mind." Either way, it denies one or the other of the positions Searle thinks of "strong AI", proving his argument.

The brain arguments also suggests that computation can't provide an explanation of the human mind (another aspect of what Searle thinks of as "strong AI"). They assume that there is no simpler way to describe the mind than to create a program that is just as mysterious as the brain was. He writes "I thought the whole idea of strong AI was that we don't need to know how the brain works to know how the mind works."

Other critics don't argue that these improvements are necessary for the Chinese room to pass the Turing test
Turing test
The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...

 or to have a mind. They accept the premise that the room as Searle describes it does, in fact, have a mind, but they argue that it is difficult to see—Searle's description is correct, but misleading. By redesigning the room more realistically they hope to make this more obvious. In this case, these arguments are being used as appeals to intuition (see next section). Searle's intuition, however, is never shaken. He writes: "I can have any formal program you like, but I still understand nothing."

In fact, the room can just as easily be redesigned to weaken our intuitions. Ned Block's "blockhead" argument suggests that the program could, in theory, be rewritten into a simple lookup table
Lookup table
In computer science, a lookup table is a data structure, usually an array or associative array, often used to replace a runtime computation with a simpler array indexing operation. The savings in terms of processing time can be significant, since retrieving a value from memory is often faster than...

 of rules
Production system
A production system is a computer program typically used to provide some form of artificial intelligence, which consists primarily of a set of rules about behavior. These rules, termed productions, are a basic representation found useful in automated planning, expert systems and action selection...

 of the form "if the user writes S, reply with P and goto X". At least in principle, any program can be rewritten (or "refactored") into this form, even a brain simulation. In the blockhead scenario, the entire mental state is hidden in the letter X, which represents a memory address
Memory address
A digital computer's memory, more specifically main memory, consists of many memory locations, each having a memory address, a number, analogous to a street address, at which computer programs store and retrieve, machine code or data. Most application programs do not directly read and write to...

—a number associated with the next rule. It is hard to visualize that an instant of one's conscious experience can be captured in a single large number, yet this is exactly what "strong AI" claims. On the other hand, such a lookup table would be ridiculously large (probably to the point of being impossible in practice), and the states could therefore be extremely specific.

Speed and complexity: appeals to intuition

The following arguments (and the intuitive interpretations of the arguments above) do not directly explain how a Chinese speaking mind could exist in Searle's room, or how the symbols he manipulates could become meaningful. However, by raising doubts about Searle's intuitions they support other positions, such as the system and robot replies.

Some of the arguments above also function as appeals to intuition, especially those that are intended to make it seem more plausible that the Chinese room contains a mind, which can include the robot, commonsense knowledge, brain simulation and connectionist replies.

Several critics believe that Searle's argument relies entirely on intuitions. Ned Block writes "Searle's argument depends for its force on intuitions that certain entities do not think." Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...

 describes the Chinese room argument as a misleading "intuition pump
Intuition pump
An intuition pump is a thought experiment structured to elicit intuitive answers about a problem. The term was coined by Daniel Dennett. In Consciousness Explained, he uses the term pejoratively to describe John Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment, characterizing it as designed to elicit...

" and writes "Searle's thought experiment depends, illicitly, on your imagining too simple a case, an irrelevant case, and drawing the 'obvious' conclusion from it."

Speed and complexity replies: The speed at which human brains process information is (by some estimates) 100 billion operations per second. Several critics point out that the man in the room would probably take millions of years to respond to a simple question, and would require "filing cabinets" of astronomical proportions. This brings the clarity of Searle's intuition into doubt.

An especially vivid version of the speed and complexity reply is from Paul
Paul Churchland
Paul Churchland is a philosopher noted for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. He is currently a Professor at the University of California, San Diego, where he holds the Valtz Chair of Philosophy. Churchland holds a joint appointment with the Cognitive Science Faculty and...

 and Patricia Churchland
Patricia Churchland
Patricia Smith Churchland is a Canadian-American philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She has been a Professor at the University of California, San Diego since 1984...

. They propose this analogous thought experiment:

Churchland's luminous room: "Consider a dark room containing a man holding a bar magnet or charged object. If the man pumps the magnet up and down, then, according to Maxwell's theory of artificial luminance (AL), it will initiate a spreading circle of electromagnetic
Electromagnetic
Electromagnetic may refer to:* Electromagnetism* Electromagnetic field* Electromagnetic force* Electromagnetic radiation* Electromagnetic induction* Electromagnetic spectrum...

 waves and will thus be luminous. But as all of us who have toyed with magnets or charged balls well know, their forces (or any other forces for that matter), even when set in motion produce no luminance at all. It is inconceivable that you might constitute real luminance just by moving forces around!" The problem is that he would have to wave the magnet up and down something like 450 trillion times per second in order to see anything.

Several of the replies above address the issue of complexity. The connectionist reply emphasizes that a working artificial intelligence system would have to be as complex and as interconnected as the human brain. The commonsense knowledge reply emphasizes that any program that passed a Turing test would have to be "an extraordinarily supple, sophisticated, and multilayered system, brimming with 'world knowledge' and meta-knowledge and meta-meta-knowledge," as Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...

 explains.

These arguments, if accepted, prevent Searle from claiming that his conclusion is obvious by undermining the intuitions that his certainty requires.

Stevan Harnad
Stevan Harnad
Stevan Harnad is a cognitive scientist.- Career :Harnad was born in Budapest, Hungary. He did his undergraduate work at McGill University and his graduate work at Princeton University's Department of Psychology...

 is critical of speed and complexity replies when they stray beyond addressing our intuitions. He writes "Some have made a cult of speed and timing, holding that, when accelerated to the right speed, the computational may make a phase transition
Phase transition
A phase transition is the transformation of a thermodynamic system from one phase or state of matter to another.A phase of a thermodynamic system and the states of matter have uniform physical properties....

 into the mental. It should be clear that is not a counterargument but merely an ad hoc
Ad hoc
Ad hoc is a Latin phrase meaning "for this". It generally signifies a solution designed for a specific problem or task, non-generalizable, and not intended to be able to be adapted to other purposes. Compare A priori....

 speculation (as is the view that it is all just a matter of ratcheting up to the right degree of 'complexity.')"

Other minds and zombies: meaninglessness

Several replies argue that Searle's argument is irrelevant because his assumptions about the mind and consciousness are faulty. Searle believes that human beings directly experience their consciousness, intentionality and the nature of the mind every day, and that this experience of consciousness is not open to question. He writes that we must "presuppose the reality and knowability of the mental." These replies question whether Searle is justified in using his own experience of consciousness to determine that it is more than mechanical symbol processing. In particular, the other minds reply argues that we can't use our experience of consciousness to answer questions about other minds (even the mind of a computer), and the epiphenomena reply argues that Searle's consciousness does not "exist" in the sense that Searle thinks it does.

Other minds reply: This reply points out that Searle's argument is a version of the problem of other minds
Problem of other minds
The problem of other minds has traditionally been regarded as an epistemological challenge raised by the skeptic. The challenge may be expressed as follows: given that I can only observe the behavior of others, how can I know that others have minds? The thought behind the question is that no matter...

, applied to machines. There is no way we can determine if other people's subjective experience is the same as our own. We can only study their behavior (i.e., by giving them our own Turing test
Turing test
The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...

). Critics of Searle argue that he is holding the Chinese room to a higher standard than we would hold an ordinary person.
Nils Nilsson writes "If a program behaves as if it were multiplying, most of us would say that it is, in fact, multiplying. For all I know, Searle may only be behaving as if he were thinking deeply about these matters. But, even though I disagree with him, his simulation is pretty good, so I’m willing to credit him with real thought."

Alan Turing
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...

 (writing 30 years before Searle presented his argument) noted that people never consider the problem of other minds when dealing with each other. He writes that "instead of arguing continually over this point it is usual to have the polite convention that everyone thinks." The Turing test
Turing test
The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...

 simply extends this "polite convention" to machines. He doesn't intend to solve the problem of other minds (for machines or people) and he doesn't think we need to.


Searle disagrees with this analysis and argues that "the study of the mind starts with such facts as that humans have beliefs, while thermostats, telephones, and adding machines don't ... what we wanted to know is what distinguishes the mind from thermostats and livers." He takes it as obvious that we can detect the presence of consciousness and dismisses these replies as being off the point.

Epiphenomenon / zombie reply: Several philosophers argue that consciousness, as Searle describes it, does not exist. This position is sometimes referred to as eliminative materialism
Eliminative materialism
Eliminative materialism is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Its primary claim is that people's common-sense understanding of the mind is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist...

: the view that consciousness is a property that can be reduced to a strictly mechanical description, and that our experience of consciousness is, as Daniel Dennett describes it, a "user illusion".
argue that, if we accept Searle's description of intentionality, consciousness and the mind, we are forced to accept that consciousness is epiphenomenal: that it "casts no shadow", that is undetectable in the outside world. Searle believes that there are "causal properties" in our neurons that give rise to the mind. However, these causal properties can't be detected by anyone outside the mind, otherwise the Chinese Room couldn't pass the Turing test
Turing test
The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...

—the people outside would be able to tell there wasn't a Chinese speaker in the room by detecting their causal properties. Since they can't detect causal properties, they can't detect the existence of the mental. Therefore, Russell and Norvig argue, Searle is mistaken about the "knowability of the mental".


Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...

 provides this extension to the "epiphenomena" argument.
Dennett's reply from natural selection: Suppose that, by some mutation, a human being is born that does not have Searle's "causal properties" but nevertheless acts exactly like a human being. (This sort of animal is called a "zombie
Philosophical zombie
A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience...

" in thought experiments in the philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...

). This new animal would reproduce just as any other human and eventually there would be more of these zombies. Natural selection would favor the zombies, since their design is (we could suppose) a bit simpler. Eventually the humans would die out. So therefore, if Searle is right, it's most likely that human beings (as we see them today) are actually "zombies," who nevertheless insist they are conscious. This suggests it's unlikely that Searle's "causal properties" would have ever evolved in the first place. Nature has no incentive to create them.

Formal arguments

Searle has produced a more formal version of the argument of which the Chinese Room forms a part. He presented the first version in 1984. The version given below is from 1990.

The part of the argument which should be controversial is A3 and it is this point which the Chinese room thought experiment is intended to prove.

He begins with three axioms: "Programs are formal (syntactic
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

)."
A program uses syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

 to manipulate symbols and pays no attention to the semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....

 of the symbols. It knows where to put the symbols and how to move them around, but it doesn't know what they stand for or what they mean. For the program, the symbols are just physical objects like any others.

"Minds have mental contents (semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....

)."
Unlike the symbols used by a program, our thoughts have meaning: they represent things and we know what it is they represent.

"Syntax by itself is neither constitutive of nor sufficient for semantics."
This is what the Chinese room argument is intended to prove: the Chinese room has syntax (because there is a man in there moving symbols around). The Chinese room has no semantics (because, according to Searle, there is no one or nothing in the room that understands what the symbols mean). Therefore, having syntax is not enough to generate semantics.


Searle posits that these lead directly to this conclusion:
Programs are neither constitutive of nor sufficient for minds.
This should follow without controversy from the first three: Programs don't have semantics. Programs have only syntax, and syntax is insufficient for semantics. Every mind has semantics. Therefore programs are not minds.


This much of the argument is intended to show that artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 will never produce a machine with a mind by writing programs that manipulate symbols. The remainder of the argument addresses a different issue. Is the human brain running a program? In other words, is the computational theory of mind
Computational theory of mind
In philosophy, the computational theory of mind is the view that the human mind is an information processing system and that thinking is a form of computing. The theory was proposed in its modern form by Hilary Putnam in 1961 and developed by Jerry Fodor in the 60s and 70s...

 correct? He begins with an axiom that is intended to express the basic modern scientific consensus about brains and minds:
Brains cause minds.

Searle claims that we can derive "immediately" and "trivially" that:
Any other system capable of causing minds would have to have causal powers (at least) equivalent to those of brains.
Brains must have something that causes a mind to exist. Science has yet to determine exactly what it is, but it must exist, because minds exist. Searle calls it "causal powers". "Causal powers" is whatever the brain uses to create a mind. If anything else can cause a mind to exist, it must have "equivalent causal powers". "Equivalent causal powers" is whatever else that could be used to make a mind.


And from this he derives the further conclusions:
Any artifact that produced mental phenomena, any artificial brain, would have to be able to duplicate the specific causal powers of brains, and it could not do that just by running a formal program.
This follows from C1 and C2: Since no program can produce a mind, and "equivalent causal powers" produce minds, it follows that programs do not have "equivalent causal powers."

The way that human brains actually produce mental phenomena cannot be solely by virtue of running a computer program.
Since programs do not have "equivalent causal powers", "equivalent causal powers" produce minds, and brains produce minds, it follows that brains do not use programs to produce minds.

Further reading

  • The Chinese Room Argument, part 4 of the September 2, 1999 interview with Searle Philosophy and the Habits of Critical Thinking in the Conversations With History series
  • Understanding the Chinese Room, Mark Rosenfelder
  • A Refutation of John Searle's "Chinese Room Argument", by Bob Murphy
    Robert P. Murphy
    Robert P. "Bob" Murphy is an Austrian School economist and anarcho-capitalist.-Education and personal life:Murphy completed his Bachelor of Arts in economics at Hillsdale College in 1998. He then moved back to his home state of New York to continue his studies at New York University. Murphy earned...

    , PDF at author's homepage, critical paper based on the assumption that the CR cannot use its inputs (which are in Chinese) to change its program (which is in English).
  • John Preston and Mark Bishop, "Views into the Chinese Room", Oxford University Press, 2002. Includes chapters by John Searle
    John Searle
    John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...

    , Roger Penrose
    Roger Penrose
    Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS is an English mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College...

    , Stevan Harnad
    Stevan Harnad
    Stevan Harnad is a cognitive scientist.- Career :Harnad was born in Budapest, Hungary. He did his undergraduate work at McGill University and his graduate work at Princeton University's Department of Psychology...

     and Kevin Warwick
    Kevin Warwick
    Kevin Warwick is a British scientist and professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading, Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom...

    .
  • Margaret Boden
    Margaret Boden
    Dr Margaret A. Boden, OBE, is a combinative researcher in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Psychology, Philosophy, Cognitive and Computer Science...

    , "Escaping from the Chinese room", Cognitive Science Research Papers No. CSRP 092, University of Sussex, School of Cognitive Sciences, 1987, OCLC 19297071, online PDF, "an excerpt from a chapter" in the then unpublished "Computer Models of Mind: : Computational Approaches in Theoretical Psychology", ISBN 052124868X (1988); reprinted in Boden (ed.) "The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence" ISBN 0198248547 (1989) and ISBN 0198248555 (1990); Boden "Artificial Intelligence in Psychology: Interdisciplinary Essays" ISBN 0262022850, MIT Press, 1989, chapter 6; reprinted in Heil, pp. 253–266 (1988) (possibly abridged); J. Heil (ed.) "Philosophy of Mind: A Guide and Anthology", Oxford University Press, 2004, pages 253-266 (same version as in "Artificial Intelligence in Psychology")
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