12 comments
I created a 11-dimensional array on my laptop, thus proving string theory.
Not sure what you mean. I don't see a connection.
Anyway, I didn't remember what that "Chinese room" business is, so I had to google it, and funnily, while I vaguely remember seeing it before and probably not having much of an opinion (as I didn't remember it), this time I got immediately annoyed by how such obviously stupid logical fallacy can deserve a Wikipedia page of its own and be a famous "thought experiment".
Anyway, I didn't remember what that "Chinese room" business is, so I had to google it, and funnily, while I vaguely remember seeing it before and probably not having much of an opinion (as I didn't remember it), this time I got immediately annoyed by how such obviously stupid logical fallacy can deserve a Wikipedia page of its own and be a famous "thought experiment".
I looked it up because of what you said. It’s a pretty substantial article. What part of it is a fallacy? The part about computers obviously not having intelligence?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
Searle is proposing what he supposes to be a proof of a computer being unable to have mind in the same sense humans have mind, and thus human intelligence being something more than a "mere computation". While in fact his argument proves absolutely nothing, and I'm honestly surprised that anyone buys into this bullshit. Actually, I think that the question itself is meaningless, but it's besides the point what I think, I'll just try to explain where's the fallacy. And since his argument is "reductio ad absurdum" it's easiest to counter by assuming the opposite, and showing that there's nothing absurd about it, i.e. there's no self-contradiction here. Just keep in mind that I'm not trying to prove the opposite, I'm only assuming it for the sake of argument.
So, the opposite assumption is that there's nothing more to intelligence than a "mere computation", and all that stuff like inner dialog and "a sense of self" are just side-effects of it. That way, there's no difference between "strong AI" and "weak AI" in his terminology, no difference between "understanding" and "simulation of understanding". Then, of course, a digital computer has a mind and understands Chinese, and also the Chinese room has a mind and understands Chinese. But Searle doesn't understand Chinese and this is supposed to be a contradiction.
But there's no contradiction here, because Searle is not the Chinese room. He isn't the mind, in this model he is to Chinese room what electricity is to a digital computer, or what neurotransmitters are to human brain. So, yeah, electricity doesn't understand Chinese, serotonin doesn't understand Chinese, single human neuron doesn't understand Chinese, but Turing-test-passing computer, Chinese brain and Chinese room all do. Searle is just a detail in the Chinese room — tiny and insignificant compared to a book, containing a complete description of a program that speaks Chinese and is able to form coherent (and persistent!) opinions on every possible topic in the world.
So, the fallacy is equating Searle's role in the hypothetical Chinese room to the whole digital computer that speaks Chinese and passes Turing test with breeze.
So, the opposite assumption is that there's nothing more to intelligence than a "mere computation", and all that stuff like inner dialog and "a sense of self" are just side-effects of it. That way, there's no difference between "strong AI" and "weak AI" in his terminology, no difference between "understanding" and "simulation of understanding". Then, of course, a digital computer has a mind and understands Chinese, and also the Chinese room has a mind and understands Chinese. But Searle doesn't understand Chinese and this is supposed to be a contradiction.
But there's no contradiction here, because Searle is not the Chinese room. He isn't the mind, in this model he is to Chinese room what electricity is to a digital computer, or what neurotransmitters are to human brain. So, yeah, electricity doesn't understand Chinese, serotonin doesn't understand Chinese, single human neuron doesn't understand Chinese, but Turing-test-passing computer, Chinese brain and Chinese room all do. Searle is just a detail in the Chinese room — tiny and insignificant compared to a book, containing a complete description of a program that speaks Chinese and is able to form coherent (and persistent!) opinions on every possible topic in the world.
So, the fallacy is equating Searle's role in the hypothetical Chinese room to the whole digital computer that speaks Chinese and passes Turing test with breeze.
The Chinese room confusion shows how effective our deepest biases are at directing our rational thought into whatever level of nonsense you can put up with.
A similar case I noticed is the resistance against the Everett interpretation of the quantum measurement problem (i.e. the wave function collapse). For some people, it's so hard to accept the consequences of your own consciousness being an emergent phenomenon of matter that interacts with other matter and thus it partakes in the very fundamental effects of such interactions, including entanglement.
A similar case I noticed is the resistance against the Everett interpretation of the quantum measurement problem (i.e. the wave function collapse). For some people, it's so hard to accept the consequences of your own consciousness being an emergent phenomenon of matter that interacts with other matter and thus it partakes in the very fundamental effects of such interactions, including entanglement.
I think you've understood the idea perfectly, including all the ways in which Searle's argument is rubbish.
However, I come to a different conclusion. I think that all this is exactly why the Chinese room concept is interesting — because it is so obvious, but somehow induces a huge resistance in so many people. I.e. the thought experiment itself isn't all that interesting — people's reactions to it are.
However, I come to a different conclusion. I think that all this is exactly why the Chinese room concept is interesting — because it is so obvious, but somehow induces a huge resistance in so many people. I.e. the thought experiment itself isn't all that interesting — people's reactions to it are.
The reason why Chinese room is a fallacy is because it's begging the question. It creates an elaborate metaphor for a computer only to exclaim that of course it's not intelligent, because that's obvious. If you don't start with a premise that "of course it's not intelligent", it's not at all obvious even for the analogy.
Searle's Chinese room is one of those things it's obvious most people talk about without ever having bothered to actually read. Searle does not say computers will never think. Early in the paper he even says - obviously machines can think because we are precisely examples of such machines. His point is that maybe it takes a certain kind of processing to yield what we call consciousness, and that may be a subset of the processes that yield outwardly similar behaviour.
I have read through the paper two or three times, as well as several other things Searle and others have written about it, and I have it open in front of me now.
In it, Searle argues that no computer program will be able to satisfy the goal he calls 'strong AI', which he defines thus: "according to strong AI, the computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind; rather, 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."
As far as I recall (and I am not going to read the whole thing again just to check) he does not precisely define 'computer' or 'computer program', but it is clear that his meaning subsumes ordinary usage: a Turing-equivalent digital device, together with any program that can run on it. It is also clear that, given his underlying position being that syntactical manipulation cannot give rise to semantics, he would include, in his definition, actual universal Turing machines, and any other device, digital or not, that, in his view, can only perform syntactical operations.
Therefore, Searle is saying that computers will never think, except in a most pedantic reading of 'computers'. He is, indeed, a materialist, and regards the brain to be a mind-instantiating machine of sorts, but, like Penrose, he thinks its consciousness must depend on something beyond what we have discovered so far.
Personally, I think the argument begs the question in this sense: it is predicated on the assumption that the only thing in the room that could understand anything would be the human operator, but that, in turn, is predicated on the assumption that nothing else about the room could do so. That he is doing this is made very clear in his attempts to rebuff the 'systems reply' and the 'simulator reply'.
In it, Searle argues that no computer program will be able to satisfy the goal he calls 'strong AI', which he defines thus: "according to strong AI, the computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind; rather, 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."
As far as I recall (and I am not going to read the whole thing again just to check) he does not precisely define 'computer' or 'computer program', but it is clear that his meaning subsumes ordinary usage: a Turing-equivalent digital device, together with any program that can run on it. It is also clear that, given his underlying position being that syntactical manipulation cannot give rise to semantics, he would include, in his definition, actual universal Turing machines, and any other device, digital or not, that, in his view, can only perform syntactical operations.
Therefore, Searle is saying that computers will never think, except in a most pedantic reading of 'computers'. He is, indeed, a materialist, and regards the brain to be a mind-instantiating machine of sorts, but, like Penrose, he thinks its consciousness must depend on something beyond what we have discovered so far.
Personally, I think the argument begs the question in this sense: it is predicated on the assumption that the only thing in the room that could understand anything would be the human operator, but that, in turn, is predicated on the assumption that nothing else about the room could do so. That he is doing this is made very clear in his attempts to rebuff the 'systems reply' and the 'simulator reply'.
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert, but based on looking this up it seems like the systems reply is fairly convincing a response - Searle's argument seems to be, as others have noted in this thread, kind of at the level of saying the electricity and chemicals don't understand Chinese and then extrapolating it to 'no understanding is present'. How does that not apply to us? Otherwise if that's all he's saying it doesn't seem like a particularly interesting argument, because I'd agree that a chemical doesn't understand Chinese since our understanding isn't generated at the singular chemical or even singular neuron level.
What's your take on this (very rapidly acquired) impression?
What's your take on this (very rapidly acquired) impression?
Imagine a brain, it's made of two parts. Say, chemical impulses, and a physical substrate. Now the chemicals don't speak Chinese. And the physical substrate doesn't speak Chinese.
Therefore nobody speaks Chinese.
Therefore nobody speaks Chinese.
There's no "part about computers obviously not having intelligence"
The most grating part of the article is involving political names into the explanation of the argument, and that the writings by Liebniz and Dneprov seemingly would offer far more interesting material to base the topic on.
Wikipedia can be terrible source of misaligned atheist theology sometimes.
The most grating part of the article is involving political names into the explanation of the argument, and that the writings by Liebniz and Dneprov seemingly would offer far more interesting material to base the topic on.
Wikipedia can be terrible source of misaligned atheist theology sometimes.
I love it. This "wormhole in a computer" business is a very long leap beyond the kind of is-it-or-isn't-it of, e.g., the "Chinese room".