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Question Hi, I'm engaged in a debate with a mate of mine over John Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment. I believe that the room doesn't understand Chinese because it lacks reasoning and the ability to weigh up all possible options and recognize the most appropriate answer. All the answers are already there and the answer given is not selected by the room itself but by the person and is dependent solely on whatever it is that they say. His response to this (having weighed up all the possible options and recognized the most appropriate answer) was that we simply have different worldviews... that I'm an absolutist and he's an empiricist. What exactly does he mean by this? What are your individual views on the subject? Many thanks and great site. Keep up the good work =)

Accepted:
November 2, 2006

Comments

I don't understand your friend's answer any better than you do, so I'm afraid I can't help you on that one! As for the Chinese Room, the case as I understand it is supposed to show that something could pass the Turing test--that is, it could provide correct outputs to given inputs--without understanding/intelligence. A string of Chinese symbols would go into the box, and the one inside (knowing no Chinese, but simply guided by the shapes of the characters in the input) would simply match these mechanically to others in a pre-established list, which he would then send out again. To the one reading the outputs (one who knows Chinese), it would look as if the outputs were the result of understanding...but they would not be. Hence, passing the Turning test for knowledge of Chinese would be no indication of actually understanding Chinese, and so the test is itself inadequate.