Topics Mind

Question If my friend is on a street corner with a life-like model of a dog and I drive past in my car so fast that I can't tell the difference between the fake dog and a real dog is there any point in me saying I saw a real or fake dog since, to me, the two are indistinguishable? The classes real dog and fake dog seem to combine to form the class dog-like object. If this same analysis were applied to Searle's Chinese room then it seems pointless to say the room does or doesn't understand. If a person who is unaware of the room's setup (sort of like me in my car) goes up to the room and asks it questions then it provides answers that are consistent with the room understanding Chinese so from that persons point of view the room is just as understanding as any chinese person on the street. If we miniaturised the room and put it in someone's head and put a real Chinese speaker behind the Chinese room slot then the questioner will not be able to tell that any change has occurred.

Accepted:
November 3, 2006

Comments

Thank you for your question. No doubt there are many situations in which it doesn't matter much whether you make a distinction between a situation in which you are fooled by something and one in which you are not. However, there are plenty of situations in which it does matter even if, "from your point of view" as you say, you can't tell the difference. If your friend is pouring kerosine on and igniting the "dog", I assume it matters a lot to you whether the thing is real or fake. Likewise, someone tempted to fall in love with an *apparent* person with whom she is communicating through a keyboard and monitor, would most likely be be very concerned whether that apparent person is a real one or a machine, and, if a machine, what kind of machine.

More generally, your phrase, "from that person's point of view" seems to be at the very least a way of referring to what that person thinks: You write, "from that persons point of view the room is just as understanding as any chinese person on the street." This is a way of saying that the person in question can't tell the difference. That is no doubt the case, but of course does not show that something that passes the Turing test has a mind. However, if you mean more by this phrase, such as it doesn't matter to that person (or anyone else), you need to explain why. After all, it often (certainly not always) matters to us whether something that seems to have a mind really does (since there are plenty of simulacra) and it matters whether something that seems to be a person really is (since there are plenty of imposters).

About your last hypothesis, "If we miniaturised the room and put it insomeone's head and put a real Chinese speaker behind the Chinese roomslot then the questioner will not be able to tell that any change hasoccurred." We have already assumed that the questioner can't tell the difference. More important, though, you might be here suggesting that in this scenario the entire "system" (that someone's head, with the miniaturized room inside) is a thinker. That may be the case, but let's be clear that if it is, that is no objection to Searle. Searle was using the Chinese Room scenario to attack the idea that computation (defined as a process in which a machine manipulates symbols in a formal system entirely in terms of their syntactic properties) is sufficient for thinking. Your scenario, which is tantamount to what he calls the "systems reply" does not attempt to support the idea that computation is sufficient for thinking.