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The Chinese Room Argument

plato.stanford.edu

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Re: The Chinese Room Argument

#21

Post by neilk »

jeffcoat wrote: post #16

I don't understand why people are willing to even accept the premise. The system as described (a book of instructions for manipulating Chinese symbols) can't usefully answer the question "what time is it?"; why should I believe it could carry on a lucid-but-very-slow conversation in Chinese? Imagine that also in the room is a triangle with four sides. Now the Chinese Room Argument disproves AI and geometry! What subj…

I think this is the only real objection to Searle.

People get handwavey in these thought experiments, that we can just assume that such a system can be built. Well, no, we can't, not even in theory. It's trivial to show that a Chinese Room that could converse for more than 15 minutes would have to contain more elementary particles than the entire planet.

There is an analogy here with Chomsky's linguistics. You can disagree with the specifics of his theory, but he did show that there was no way that people were learning sentences like parrots and repeating them. There had to be some computational / grammatical process.

Anybody can imagine mechanical alternatives for doing any information processing. To an extent, that drives the whole of the programming industry. The whole question of intelligence is that we can do it with a few pounds of biological material. Anything that doesn't address this is missing the point.

Re: The Chinese Room Argument

#22

Post by jerf »

camccann wrote: post #8
Esspe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, this argument have existential consequences: either it's not possible to emulate mind on turing machine or we don't have qualia and consciousness (it's just the illusion, that we have). And i don't like the latter.

we don't have qualia and consciousness (it's just the illusion, that we have) An illusion experienced by whom? What's the difference between having an illusion of consciousness and having the real thing?

"What's the difference between having an illusion of consciousness and having the real thing?"

Primarily, the word "illusion".

At this point, having read up on these issues for a while, anytime I see the word "illusion" now I tend to just shut the book/leave the webpage/whatever. Have you ever, once, seen someone sit down and say what they mean by "illusion", or give a way of telling you how to distinguish between "illusion" or "reality"? Maybe you have (no sarcasm intended), but I've never seen it, and without that the word basically just marks someone who is trying to sound insightful without doing the hard work of actually being insightful and saying something without leaving an enormous linguistic void right in the center of the argument.

Re: The Chinese Room Argument

#23

Post by afterz »

neilk wrote: post #21
jeffcoat wrote: post #16

I don't understand why people are willing to even accept the premise. The system as described (a book of instructions for manipulating Chinese symbols) can't usefully answer the question "what time is it?"; why should I believe it could carry on a lucid-but-very-slow conversation in Chinese? Imagine that also in the room is a triangle with four sides. Now the Chinese Room Argument disproves AI and geometry! What subj…

I think this is the only real objection to Searle. People get handwavey in these thought experiments, that we can just assume that such a system can be built. Well, no, we can't, not even in theory. It's trivial to show that a Chinese Room that could converse for more than 15 minutes would have to contain more elementary particles than the entire planet. There is an analogy here with Chomsky's linguistics. You can di…

" It's trivial to show that a Chinese Room that could converse for more than 15 minutes would have to contain more elementary particles than the entire planet."

I don't believe it, can you show it?

Re: The Chinese Room Argument

#24

Post by radu_floricica »

Esspe wrote: post #3
mindstab wrote: post #2

Seriously, why won't this 2+ decade old argument die? It's sophomoric and picked apart in second year cognitive systems classes by 19 year old children. It glaringly misunderstands and misrepresents. If people are genuinely interested in AI they should take a basic course in it at university or pick up a real book on the subject.

In my opinion, this argument have existential consequences: either it's not possible to emulate mind on turing machine or we don't have qualia and consciousness (it's just the illusion, that we have). And i don't like the latter.

Take a look at "Society of mind" by Marvin Minsky. We already understand pretty well that the mind is a colony of mostly independent system, working in various configurations. Here's the first chapter: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/minsky07/minsky07_index.html

As far as I'm concerned, qualia is just a fancy synonym for "soul". I don't miss it one bit. Consciousness on the other hand, that we have. Only it turns out to be a more elusive concept then we once thought.

Re: The Chinese Room Argument

#25

Post by pvg »

Richard Gabriel has a nice write-up on this, well worth reading especially if you're in the sputtering 'zomg this is SO dumb' camp. It's also a much quicker read than the entirety of the Stanford page.

http://www.dreamsongs.com/Searle.html

"Searle's argument is subtle in a way that seems to confuse intelligent readers. "

Re: The Chinese Room Argument

#26

Post by tybris »

I have a grudge against written philosophy. The meaning of words is subjective. It is defined by what relations you draw in your brains when you read or hear that word. This not only makes words quite unimportant, they turn your mind into a philosophical mine field. It is constantly under the assumption that words have some universal meaning. People seeking for the "intelligence" or "truth" that they have in their head, but they're constantly redefining it based on new insights obtained in their search. As a result, all these concepts seem unattainable.

If you take the focus off the word, much of your prejudice disappears. You see the relationships, the structure, the observations, the logic, the nuance. You can see you used two distinct meanings of the word "intelligence". One is a set of expected reactions, the other is your consciousness. Now this gives rise to a logical question: Are these two things the same? The Chinese room shows that's not necessarily the case. However, might that feeling you call consciousness be a side-effect of a the particular type of Chinese room that's going on in your head? That's how you get interesting philosophy.

Re: The Chinese Room Argument

#27

Post by DougBTX »

afterz wrote: post #23
neilk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the only real objection to Searle. People get handwavey in these thought experiments, that we can just assume that such a system can be built. Well, no, we can't, not even in theory. It's trivial to show that a Chinese Room that could converse for more than 15 minutes would have to contain more elementary particles than the entire planet. There is an analogy here with Chomsky's linguistics. You can di…

" It's trivial to show that a Chinese Room that could converse for more than 15 minutes would have to contain more elementary particles than the entire planet." I don't believe it, can you show it?

Since you could fit someone who speaks Chinese in the room... assuming people are made of elementary particles.

Re: The Chinese Room Argument

#28

Post by jeffcoat »

DougBTX wrote: post #27
afterz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" It's trivial to show that a Chinese Room that could converse for more than 15 minutes would have to contain more elementary particles than the entire planet." I don't believe it, can you show it?

Since you could fit someone who speaks Chinese in the room... assuming people are made of elementary particles.

You've assumed your conclusion there: that the system Searle describes is able to encode information in a way similar to a human Chinese speaker.

Re: The Chinese Room Argument

#29

Post by telemachos »

tybris wrote: post #26

I have a grudge against written philosophy. The meaning of words is subjective. It is defined by what relations you draw in your brains when you read or hear that word. This not only makes words quite unimportant, they turn your mind into a philosophical mine field. It is constantly under the assumption that words have some universal meaning. People seeking for the "intelligence" or "truth" that they have in their he…

The meaning of words is subjective.

No. Or at least, not entirely, not in any significant way, and mostly just no.

If language were truly subjective, we should expect almost all attempts at communication to fail. If language were radically subjective, then two people speaking to each other in the same language would be for all intents and purposes like a speaker of (only) English trying to communicate to a speaker of (only) Chinese. It's manifestly the case that this isn't so. Beyond this, if language were truly subjective, we wouldn't be able to think (since the person-to-person communication problem would emerge even for one person).

The real world strikes again.

Re: The Chinese Room Argument

#30

Post by ekiru »

neilk wrote: post #21
jeffcoat wrote: post #16

I don't understand why people are willing to even accept the premise. The system as described (a book of instructions for manipulating Chinese symbols) can't usefully answer the question "what time is it?"; why should I believe it could carry on a lucid-but-very-slow conversation in Chinese? Imagine that also in the room is a triangle with four sides. Now the Chinese Room Argument disproves AI and geometry! What subj…

I think this is the only real objection to Searle. People get handwavey in these thought experiments, that we can just assume that such a system can be built. Well, no, we can't, not even in theory. It's trivial to show that a Chinese Room that could converse for more than 15 minutes would have to contain more elementary particles than the entire planet. There is an analogy here with Chomsky's linguistics. You can di…

What's wrong with the objection that, if you accept that any two universal Turing machines are equivalent in power, Searle's argument amounts to(letting P be "there exists an algorithm A such that any computing system executing A understand Chinese" and Q be "a human simulating a computing system executing the algorithm A understands Chinese") "Suppose P. It's obvious that ¬Q. Since P is equivalent to Q, P leads to a contradiction. Therefore ¬P"? It begs the question.

Searle's thought experiment does inspire one of my own. Consider a computer that executes a sorting algorithm(mergesort, for example) on inputs consisting of sequences of number. Does it understand how to sort a sequence of numbers? What if a person uses mergesort manually to sort sequences of numbers? Does this person understand how to sort a sequence of numbers? Is there any fundamental difference between the understanding of a person who uses mergesort to sort sequences of numbers and that of a computer that uses mergesort to sort sequences of numbers?

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