Searle's Chinese Room Argument
What's the setup?
Locked in a room
Given Chinese Symbols (database)
Given a set of English rules for transforming chinese symbols from the first two lists
Given a Second List of Chinese Symbols is slid under the door
In order to produce a third list of chinese symbols
which then slide under the door
This is meant to be a direct analogy to turing machines (computers)
Main Argument
The act of following the rules (instantiating a program) is not sufficent for understanding (intentionality)
Why?
The person in the Chinese room does not understand chinese, just follows a program
What's missing is meaning.
What is meaning?
one thing represents another thing
flag represent a country
word/character "cup" represents the object cup
symbolic representation, stands for, points to, indicates,
Semantics
Reference one things "refers" to another
Nouns at least have this
maybe we can refer concepts (platonic form for verbs?)
Sign vs. Symbol
Natural Signs
"smoke means fire"
Difference "intentionality"
Context
wide and narrow content
Activity/Imperative
Associations
semantic networks
associationism (version connectionism)
Intentionality
Semantics
Mental Content
Intentions
Aboutness
Propositional Attitudes
relation to a concept or proposition
proposition P = X is Y
agent A
relation b (belief) such that "A b P"
relation d (doubt) "A d P"
Language of Thought
mental content are sentences (propositions) in the head
we can take different attitudes towards them
How do mental representations achieve representation?
How do thoughts get their contents?
Why can't programs (computers) alone have intentinality??
No causal connection
No beliefs (of course)
No access to semantic content of a symbol
Only syntactic meaning
Causal Structures
What does that mean?
not that it is not a program, but must be something more
that something a specific physcial causal structure,
so that computer programs don't count.
Why?
multiple realizability
the comuter does not matter, just the structure of the program
Language can be a reflex
Tricks
Searle gets leverage from language
Homunculus Theory, little man in the head
Strong AI vs. Weak AI
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